software digital zoom

[d_mlr]

Hi-

I began building an inspection application using a spare PCI 1407 board with a monochrome sony ccd camera (XC-73).  Software is VB, NI Imaq.  Camera is 768 (H) x 494 (V), 570 lines. 

The horizontal field of view specification is 0.25".  So with a 1/3" CCD, and a lens magnification of 0.8, I've got "roughly" the correct field of view. 

I'm acquiring "live" video, I've got some overlays created, the image calibrated, etc.   We're saving an image, then viewing it with a custom viewer that displays imageandvisioninfo- i.e. the image plus the overlays. 

The problem I've run into now is that the end user wants much better image quality; i.e. he wants to be able to zoom in on the image to see fine detail. 

Using the built in digital zoom function in the imaq viewer works great, but the image quality is limited once you start "digitally zooming". 

What are options for improving functionality of digital zoom?  Hardware stuff like higher resolution digital camera w/ digital board?  Some software setting?

Again, we'd like to save a single image with all of the overlay information and the entire field of view, but then have the ability to digitally zoom in on the image and see finer detail.

I apologize if this question seems remedial

Thanks in advance

Drew

[BruceAmmons]

Drew,

If your camera does not provide the resolution in the first place, you can't really get it by zooming.

You can fake it a little bit by using interpolation to generate the missing pixels between the existing pixels.  You can only get 2x to 4x and have it look decent, but it is better than nothing.  It also takes a little while to interpolate, so it wouldn't work well on a live image.  Take a look at IMAQ Interpolate.

Bruce