“The Center for Telecommunications Education and Research (CTER)
at the University of Alabama at Birmingham is presently involved
with research in the area of telepathology system architectures and
performance. The purpose of the research is to aid physicians in
the diagnoses of disease in microscopic tissue specimens. If
the image acquisition component of the telepathology system had the
potential to render preliminary diagnostic results in certain
cases, this would allow the physician to make a complete diagnosis
in a shorter period of time. This approach to telepathology is a
primary motivation behind the Linux DSP Shell (Bonner, 1999).
This type of research requires a robust, stable platform that
allows for real-time image acquisition and complex processing. The
nature of the telemedicine application also requires the use of
subsystems that do not adversely affect overall system performance.
For these reasons, as well as for economic considerations, Linux
was the environment of choice. However, image processing solutions
for the Linux environment have been limited. This was the case
until Wes Hosking et al., (Hosking 1998), ported the Dipix Vision
Library (XVL) to Linux. This made it possible to pursue a real-time
image processing system for the Linux environment.”
“Although the concept for this project arose from a sponsored
research project related to telemedicine, the development of the
prototype DSP Shell system was initiated as part of an author’s
Senior Design sequence in the UAB Dept. of Electrical and Computer
Engineering. As such, the student’s design objectives were parallel
to that of the project. By combining results from development of an
application platform for Linux with reporting on the culmination of
the undergraduate experience in Engineering, we hope to expose
interested readers to both the process of technical education and
the excellent development properties of the Linux environment.”