REAL-TIME IMAGE PROCESSING SYSTEM

A real-time image processing system (800) includes an array (810) of storage elements (813), each of which is designed to store a signal representative of radiation of interest. This system (800) provides image processing at a viable sampling rate even for very large arrays and permits very efficient determination of single element detections. Time-varying orthogonal functions are created by digital processor (804). The processor (804) modulates these base time-varying orthogonal functions by applying to them a matrix of weighing functions. These modulated time-varying orthogonal functions are then applied to selected storage elements (813). The modulated outputs of the array (810) are combined (838) and distributed among parallel channels (886, 888, 890). Demodulators correlate the signal in each channel with a respective of the original orthogonal functions. The demodulated outputs are digitized by an analog-to digital converter (908) for processing by a digital processor (908). The processor can use these demodulated output to efficiently interrogate the array (810), or proceed to use the outputs for image processing computations and other tasks.