Overlay Points: Creating input array of points

[J-Tek]

I have a binary(0,255) outline of a laser profile. I'd like to save the coordinates of each point and save this to a file and read that back in and overlay these points onto a regular 8-bit laser image profile. I don't exactly know how to create the 1D array of points to input into the IMAQ Overlay Points.vi Can someone show me an example of this?

Thanx,

[Jack_A.]

I'm not sure of the best way to detect the outline of your laser profile, but here is an idea. You can use the Spoke function to detect the outer edges of the laser. The Spoke function searches radially in a circle for edges. You can control the search direction and edge parameters as in other edge detection techniques. The function is called IMAQ Spoke.vi and it has several outputs which correspond to the edges (points) found during the search. You can then use these points to overlay onto another image with IMAQ Overlay Points.vi as you mentioned. Hope this helps.

Jack Arnold
Application Engineer
National Instruments

[J-Tek]

Well actually I just threshold the image then do an edge detection on it. That works fine. It's actually the OverlayPoints.vi that Im having trouble with. How do I create 1D array of points that it accepts as an input? The vi asks for an array of point-coordinate clusters to overlay on the image. I don't know how to create one(array) from the points given to me by the outline of the laser profile that I already have.

thanx