The stereo correspondence problem on a ring-based network

Abstract

A reconfigurable network called the "reconfigurable multi-ring network" (RMRN) is described. The RMRN is shown to be a truly scalable network in that each node in the network has a fixed degree of connectivity and the reconfiguration mechanism ensures a network diameter of O(log/sub 2/N) for an N-processor network. Basic message passing and reconfiguration primitives for the SIMD/SPMD RMRN are designed for use as building blocks for more complex parallel algorithms. The RMRN is shown to be a viable architecture for image processing and computer vision problems. As an example, a problem of stereo correspondence, known as the stereocorrelation operation, is addressed. Stereocorrelation is one of the most computationally intensive imaging tasks. It is used as a visualization tool in many applications, including remote sensing, geographic information systems and robot vision.