Golden Eye is created to recognize oil spots on water surface by monitoring with CCD camera. A special enlightenment and geometrical location of the CCD camera in a closed dark box make possible the recognition of objects, floating on water surface.

Oil in water

The oil spots on water surface are difficult to be recognized because the oil is spread in a very thin layer and the colors of water and oil are very similar. Golden Eye uses a perfect method for enhanced separation of objects using their intensity. The proper geometrical location of the camera in the black box and the highly sensitive algorithm facilitate the distinguishing of oil spots from water surface (background) and visualize them on the computer screen. As a result Golden Eye shows the surface of oil spots as a percent from the total surface.

In case of fast running water a potential difference between the two tubes is necessary.

If the water runs not so fast it is possible to use a floating configuration. The most important thing is to avoid waves.

HARDWARE INSTALLATION

The hardware is a system consisting of a black box, two tubes, a CCD camera and light source. The construction protects the water surface from the sun light and the use of a special geometrical location for the light source makes possible the recognition of oil spots. A special system holds the distance between the water surface and the camera so that a good picture can be obtained without  fixing the focus every time. It is very important that the water surface is calm at the point of measuring.

SOFTWARE

The programme was created in VisualBasic 6 programming language and uses MATROX graphic card driver system (MATROX METEOR).This determines some hardware requirements.

To start using Matrox Meteor you need the following:

• PC with a PCI bus and a Pentium processor or better;

• When running Windows 95 - 16 Mbyte of memory; for Windows NT - 24 Mbyte of memory

Minimum requirements :

• For full Matrox Meteor functionality we recommend system that uses newer PCI chipsets, such as the Intel 430FX, 430HX, 430VX (Triton) PCI chipset because they generally offer the required sustained capability.
• For a Pentium Pro system with a 440FX chipset you must use a Matrox Meteor /ppb; other versions will not work. In addition, when using this chipset, the colour grabber might be limited to 5:5:5 (15 bit) format because of system memory bandwidth limitation.
• For more information please use Matrox Meteor (Installation and hardware Reference book) 1997.

The programme does not use all the power of the graphic card. Golden Eye uses only one channel from the graphic card in CCIR (Initial digitizer configuration format). The so programmed set-up gives black and white signal in the area of 768x576 points. The Golden Eye processes in a half of this field.

Golden Eye Menus

Golden Eye is a completed package. It compiles to EXE code, which uses the MATROX METEOR functions created on C++ and converted to DLL databases to take the picture from the CCD camera.  Golden Eye uses Windows 95 or Windows NT and is distributed on 3 diskettes (Set-up disks). One additional disk contains instructions and the necessary information about the system installation and the system set-up. After set-up installation you can start Golden Eye from your desktop (the programme menu on your computer).

Fig.1General panel

Fig. 2 Hardware calibration process

Fig. 3 Obtaining figure for proper filter

Fig. 4 Example for good calculation-See Picture Box

This panel contains Big Picture Box with information from the camera, three buttons (Calibrate Picture, Auto and Stop), the graphical box with scale (0-100%) and some other fields which will be described below.

The picture box will be blank. Now you are ready to start Golden Eye. You can start or stop the data calculation with AUTO and STOP buttons. You can press STOP button any time when you want to stop and calibrate the system. Press AUTO to start the Golden Eye. In order to obtain good results you need to calibrate the color filter. If the color filter is not correctly set in the COLOUR FILTER BOX, the result will be wrong.

How to set the filter color?

Golden Eye has an automated function for obtaining the light intensity of any point. If you have just started the system, then the color filter in the box has value 4 000 000. This is the automatically loaded filter, but probably it is not the proper one for your case. The cursor in your Picture Box becomes a cross (Fig. 3) and if you click the mouse upon any point of the Picture Box in the Calibrate Filter field you will obtain the value (intensity of this point in the range between 0 and 16 777 215, 0 is black). Press AUTO and then click the mouse on some spot in the Picture Box screen. So you will obtain the intensity of this point in the CALIBRATE FILTER box. Now click the mouse on some point of the background and you will obtain the value for the background intensity. The value that you should choose for your filter must be between these two values. Write down in the COLOUR BOX some value in this interval. After some probes you will obtain a filter value, which is proper for the Golden Eye and the program will calculate the surface of the spots correctly (Fig. 4).

Protection from false alarm?

The result depends strongly on the picture, taken in an instant. It is not recommended to draw conclusions based on such short interval of time. That?s why it is good to make a conclusion based on the processing of several pictures, taking into account the average value. This is the only way to protect the programme from producing a false alarm signal. That?s why Golden Eye saves the data from several pictures in its memory and the final result is their average. STACK is the place when Golden Eyes saves the data and the average value will be used for comparison with the Danger Level. How many values you want to have in STACK depends on the operator. Golden Eye enables you to keep and compare data in the range of 1 to 50 units.

Fig.5 a) and b)

Some examples on object processing.

What does exactly appear in the Picture Box before and after calculation you can see on Fig. 5a and 5b. Picture 5b shows the intensity of oil spots before calculation. With a naked eye can be seen three spots. After calculation Golden Eye colors the oil spots in light blue (Fig.5a) upon black background. How exactly Golden Eye processes the objects, depends on many factors, as correct filter, proper position of the camera and light, proper focus, water situation, water velocity, ets). 

Fig. 6 (Incorrect filter) 

Figure 6 is an example of a picture, made by incorrectly set filter. The spot is not well outlined. In this case a higher value should be given for the filter. 

Fig.7

Fig.8

On Fig. 8 a uncommon object is visible on the background (probably some reflection from water surface). In this case you must be very careful and make Golden Eye calculate this object as background. This is not a spot and therefore Golden Eye must calculate it as background (or color it in black)

NOT calculated from system real picture

Calculated form system picture ( the spots are in red)

Half of picture is calculated

On the last picture you can see two kinds of oil spots (calculated in red and green) and water surface in blue

Some real pictures

New interests for oil in water recognition

is still interesting for the industry.During 2000 new experiments were prepared and new set up for testing new software approaches for oil on water recognition was built. The experiments were carried out in City University - London UK.

 Many industrial partners are involved in this environment protection project. The big challenge in the future will be tracking, recognition and analyzing oil spots in water with real time systems. There are many other techniques for oil in water recognition but image processing is one of the best approaches without moving parts, not expensive, not high energy consuming and very suitable for automation. This makes our approach very promising.