Vision Acquisition Software 19.5 does not support Polarized Mono 8 Pixel Format

[thinkbin]

Hello, we recently purchased a polarization sensitive camera. The camera is USB3 Vision compatible. However, the camera uses new pixel format called Polarized Mono 8. Essentially it is a 8-bit format. When I tried to grab image in NI-Max, it give me the error message of 'decoder is not available for this pixel format'. So I can't run this camera in LabVIEW. Anyone has any idea about how to solve this issue? Thanks!

[Bob_Schor]

My guess is that this is a proprietary image format that the GenICam Standard (which IMAQdx can support) does not recognize.  I tried looking up Polarized Mono 8 Pixel on the Web, but got now obvious hits.  You should contact the Camera Manufacturer and ask if they have a LabVIEW-compatible driver.

Bob Schor

[thinkbin]

Thank you for your input Bob. Polarized Mono 8 or 16 seems a new type of image format that are associated with new polarization sensitive CMOS sensor from Sony. Both Imaging Source and Lucid Vision support these formats. I contacted the manufacturer, they can't get their camera to work in LabVIEW either. So they suggested me contact LabVIEW...

[alexderjuengere]

so the issue is, that 8-Bit Polarized Mono (PolarizedMono8) is not supported by NI IMAQdx 19.5

what are the technical difference between PolarizedMono8 and Mono8?

Both format transmits raw pixel data using one byte for each pixel?!

[rolfk]

It would seem to me that Polarized format uses a similar technique as Bayer Encoding where there is a mask with different polarization filters in front of the sensor so that from a group of 4 pixels there is one pixel for each polarization of  90°, 45°, 135° and 0°.

While you could theoretically view this image as simple monochromatic picture it would probably look weird as the individual pixels in each 4 pixel group have different intensity depending on the polarization of the light at that point.

But IMAQ Vision doesn't provide an image format that could preserve polarization information in itself. Adding such a feature would be a pretty extensive development effort. As the pixel format is advertised as its own type, IMAQ Vision also has to specifically have support added to recognize it but without significant development effort all it could do is to map it to a simple monochrome image and leave the interpretation of the polarization information to the user (possible by mapping the polarization of each 4 pixel group to different colors).

I suppose with some arithmetic you could calculate a polarization value between 0 and 180 degree from the 4 individual pixels in each group and then generate a complex image with half the dimensions of the pixels that has the averaged intensity in the real part and the polarization in the imaginary part of the picture, although it wouldn't be a traditional complex image.