March 03, 2009 08:00 ET

DALSA Advances Machine Vision Software Color Capability

DALSA's Sapera Essential Color Tool Ideal for Many Inspection Applications; Free Run-Times Offered for Select Tools

WATERLOO, ON--(Marketwire - March 3, 2009) - DALSA Corporation (TSX: DSA), a global leader in machine vision technology, today announced it has advanced the color capability of its Sapera Essential software for machine vision applications. Sapera Essential (Edition 01/2009) is a cost-effective machine vision software toolkit that bundles board-level acquisition and control with advanced image processing capability. It is intended to deliver the critical functionality needed to design, develop and deploy high-performance machine vision applications, while at the same time significantly lowering deployment costs. This version of Sapera Essential provides support for Windows 64-bit and the .Net interface.

With the introduction of the Sapera Essential Color Tool, the software delivers improved color capability which can be divided into four main categories:

--  Color Conversions: a series of optimized color space conversion
    functions supporting RGB, YUV, HSV and LAB formats. Split and merge
    functions are also available for plane-by-plane processing.
--  Color Image Processing: a set of basic image processing operators such
    as thresholding, histogram, projections, statistics, clustering, and color
    reduction.
--  Color Calibration: a color correction algorithm trained from a
    standardized color chart and used to compensate for different lighting
    conditions.
--  Color Classification: a color classifier trained from a series of
    color samples and used to separate color regions of an image. Coupled with
    a blob analyzer it is used to inspect color images in areas like food
    inspection and pharmaceutical.
    

Hardware independent, Sapera Essential offers users a single API and a comprehensive feature set, including: acquisition control, image processing primitive, Blob analysis, area and shaped based pattern matching, color, barcode (linear/1D and matrix/2D codes), OCR and lens correction tools with easy-to-use application development and evolution tools.

Fully compliant with DALSA's Trigger-to-Image Reliability framework, the latest version of Sapera Essential now also includes support for the Windows 64-bit and .NET platforms. Now, developers creating new code or porting legacy code to 64-bit operation have access to a complete software development kit (SDK) from DALSA. The Color Tool also provides both a C++ and .NET interface and is supported under Sapera Architect, a GUI-based image processing prototyping environment. Support for.NET platform within Sapera Essential allows for rapid application development using Microsoft Visual Basic, C# or C++ platforms.

Free Run-Time Licenses

Targeted at machine vision OEMs, the Sapera Essential run-time components are modular in nature and facilitate field installations to meet various performance and price requirements. When bundled with various DALSA image capture and processing hardware, the Sapera Essential run-time license (for the template based pattern finding, shape analysis and lens correction tools) is offered free of charge. In addition, other Sapera Essential image analysis tools such as edge-based pattern find tool, 1D and 2D barcode, OCR and Color tools are offered at competitively priced combinations.

Download Evaluation Copy

An evaluation copy of Sapera Essential for 32-bit and 64-bit is now available for download from the DALSA website.

To learn more about these image processing and analysis tools, visit the Sapera Essential product page or take an Interactive Product Tour. To download a full resolution photo of DALSA's Sapera Essential software package, visit DALSA's media kit.

About DALSA's Machine Vision Products and Services

For more than 25 years DALSA has led the design, manufacture and deployment of digital imaging components for the machine vision OEM market, and now offers Vision Appliances for factory floor deployment. Today, DALSA image sensors, cameras, frame grabbers, software, and Vision Appliances are used in thousands of automated inspection systems around the world and across multiple industries including semiconductor, flat panel display, electronics, automotive, medical, packaging and general manufacturing.

About DALSA Corporation

DALSA is an international high performance semiconductor and electronics company that designs, develops, manufactures, and markets digital imaging products and solutions, in addition to providing semiconductor products and services. DALSA's core competencies are in specialized integrated circuit and electronics technology, software, and highly engineered semiconductor wafer processing. Products and services include image sensor components; electronic digital cameras; vision processors; image processing software; and semiconductor wafer foundry services for use in MEMS, high-voltage semiconductors, image sensors and mixed-signal CMOS chips. DALSA is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol "DSA." The Company has its corporate offices in Waterloo, ON and over 1000 employees worldwide.

All trademarks are registered by their respective companies. DALSA reserves the right to make changes at anytime without notice.