The diversification of TV production methods has made production system much more com-plex. Considering these situations, the authors have developed a new universal video processor "Picot" (Picture computer). This consists of software controled standardied hardware modules. A developed model of the Picot. is a parallel processor system with about 200 processors and can process video signals sampled at 14.3MHz in realtime. This paper describes the hardware of the Picot. Programming Environment for the system PicPEn, and the application system for post-production.

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In order to apply to the applications of an image processing, we have improved VM and VI of Smalltalk-80 on standard EWS. We developed operational evironment of positron CT(PET) system using Smalltalk-80 as an example of practical applications. These approach is only by adding new class for image processing. The limitation of Smalltalk-80 using standard EWS are made clear. Particulary, in the case of system extension, we are faced with the bottle neck of hardware potential of standard EWS and with the limit of real-time potential by UNIX. Then, we considered these limits of applications and developed new original object oritented machine, OOPS (Object Oriented Processing System), which is used Smalltalk-80 as operating system.

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For the artificial realization and the application of the visual function of 3-D space perception, the better understanding of human visual mechanism is required strongly. The disparity and occlusion observed with binocular viewing seems to be the most important cues to get 3-D information. Then, the authors developed a simple stereoscopic display system using a time sharing display of left eye and right eye images with liquid crystal shutter. This system is composed of a simple small circuit and has big advantages such as that the hardware can be applied to any display system and the software can be transplant to different type computer system easily. Then, the authors tried to apply this system for the vision research.

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A TV speckle interferometer using the block pattern matching method has been developed and has been applied to the measurment of the distribution of the in-plane displacement. The current speckle image is stored in 4 image processing units which have 32 bit CPU in each unit. The CPU calculates independently the matching evaluate function between the current speckle block and the first stored one, and estimates the new peak position of this function which is interpolated by fitting a parabola using the value of the peak and two neighbouring values around one. Within one second, the measurement of 49 displacements is finished with an accuracy of 0.05 pixels.

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Book database systems of companies. universities or individuals are used Tedious and laborious jobs. however, are required to lake such efficiently. In order to assist in making book database systems database systems automatically, we propose a pattern recognition method to extract and recognize characters on the shelfback of a book, i. e., title. author's name and publishing company, from a bookshelf image. This method divides a bookshelf image into several books, and extract character regions on the shelfback of each book. This method is also applied to other application, such as automatic checking of book position in a library.

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Various kinds of HDTV application have been developed since the international HDTV studio standard was established by the CCIR. In those applications, the demand for a still picture system is increasing. Program compatibility is important to promote the HDTV still picture system, otherwise a program produced by a particular system may not be played back on other systems. We studied user requirement in many aspects, such as the number of recordable pictures, access time, picture quality, etc., and adopted the three-disk system to maintain the maximum operation flexibility. In this system, video, audio, and control data are recorded on separate disks. The video data are recorded on a 130mm rewritable Magneto-Optical (MO) disk or a 120mm CD-ROM. The audio data are recorded on a Compact Disc (CD). The control data are recorded on a 3.5-inch Floppy Disk (FD). The system provides a layered structure for video data, by which a wide range of data can be treated, from a full band HDTV picture to a bit-reduced one. It also provides a lot of special effect functions, such as dissolve, scroll, wipe, and so on. A quick scene change (within 2 seconds) is available with bit-reduced data. The sequence of the pictures to be played back can easily be changed by altering the control data to another one. With these together, the system covers a wide range of user requirement.

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