Introduction

The LTI-Lib is an object oriented library with algorithms and data structures frequently used in image processing and computer vision. It has been developed at the Chair of Technical Computer Science (Lehrstuhl fuer Technische Informatik) LTI at the Aachen University of Technology, as part of many research projects in computer vision dealing with robotics, object recognition and sing language and gesture recognition.

The main goal of the LTI-Lib is to provide an object oriented library in C++, which simplifies the code sharing and maintenance, but still providing fast algorithms that can be used in real applications.

It has been developed using GCC under Linux, and Visual C++ under Windows NT. We have not tested it under other platforms.

Many classes encapsulate Windows/Linux functionality in order to simplify dealing with system or hardware specific code (for example classes for multi-threading and synchronization, time measurement and serial port access).

Linear algebra

Matrices, Vectors, Tensors, and functors to extract eigenvalues, eigenvectors, linear equations solutions, statistics, etc. are provided.

Classification and Clustering

Radial Basis Function classifiers, Support Vector Machines, k-Means, Fuzzy C-Means, classification statistics are just some examples of what you can do with the LTI-Lib.

Image Processing

The most classes deal with image processing problems. Different segmentation approaches, linear filters, wavelets, steerable filters, und much more are already available.

Visualization and Drawing Tools

The most difficult part when developing image processing algorithms in C++ is showing temporary images while debugging. Due to the object oriented architecture of the LTI-Lib, you just need to create a viewer object and give it the image you need to show. That's it. An if you additionally need to draw some extra information on that image (some text, ellipses, boxes, lines or points) you can use one of the drawing objects. This will help you to save lots of time!

Documentation

All code is documented using the great tool Doxygen, and is available on-line here.

There is also a Wiki for users and developers of the LTI-Lib.

The LTI-Lib uses the trackers to receive bug reports, feature and support requests and a wiki page to keep track of longer term projects.

Requirements

For Windows NT you will need at least the MS Visual C++ 6.0 with Service Pack 5.0 or the MS Visual C++ .NET 2003 (Version .NET 2002 is NOT supported).

For Linux you will require at least GCC 2.95.3.

For both platforms you will need PERL, and if you want to use the viewers (and we think you will!), you will also need to have installed the GTK libraries. See also the on-line documentation for more information.

LTI-Lib License

Copyright © 1998-2005 by Chair of Technical Computer Science, RWTH-Aachen.

The LTI-Lib is free software; permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its documentation under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License is hereby granted. No representations are made about the suitability of this software for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty. See the GNU Lesser General Public License for more details.

The LTI-Lib is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Lesser General Public License for more details.

Projects using the LTI-Lib

For users who work with the LTI-Lib on Windows platforms might like to take a look at Impresario. This is a small Rapid Prototyping System which supports the development and evaluation of simple image processing systems and incorporates the LTI-Lib into an extendable graphical user interface.

More projects which utilize the LTI-Lib are listed separately.

Acknowledgements

Thanks go to all authors:

Suat Akyol, Pablo Alvarado, Daniel Beier, Axel Berner, Florian Bley, Ulrich Canzler, Peter Doerfler, Thorsten Dick, Thomas Erger, Helmuth Euler, Holger Fillbrandt, Dorothee Finck, Birgit Gehrke, Peter Gerber, Claudia Goenner, Ingo Grothues, Xin Gu, Michael Haehnel, Arnd Hannemann, Christian Harte, Bastian Ibach, Torsten Kaemper, Thomas Krueger, Frederik Lange, Lars Libuda, Henning Luepschen, Peter Mathes, Alexandros Matsikis, Ralf Miunske, Bernd Mussmann, Jens Paustenbach, Norman Pfeil, Vlad Popovici, Gustavo Quiros, Markus Radermacher, Jens Rietzschel, Daniel Ruijters, Thomas Rusert, Volker Schmirgel, Stefan Syberichs, Guy Wafo Moudhe, Ruediger Weiler, Jochen Wickel , Marco Wilka, Benjamin Winkler, Xinghan Yu, Marius Wolf, Joerg Zieren