June 5, 2001, Montreal, Canada - Matrox Imaging today announced the latest release of its award-winning software development toolkit for machine vision, medical imaging and image analysis - Matrox Imaging Library (MIL) 7.0. This high-level programming library offers an extensive set of optimized functions for image capture, processing, analysis, display and archiving.

MIL 7.0's new and innovative Geometric Model Finder tool for geometric pattern recognition quickly and accurately locates a model - or multiple models - at any position, including angle, at any scale from 50-200 percent, and under the harshest of conditions. Even when working with contour occlusion and non-uniform contrast changes including contrast reversal, MIL 7.0 hits the target model every time. The Geometric Model Finder also incorporates a unique method of calibration that transparently compensates for optical and perspective distortions and provides results in real-world coordinates. Deployment is also simplified as pattern models can be easily shared amongst calibrated systems.

Offering the best price/performance in the industry, MIL 7.0's Geometric Model Finder complements MIL's existing normalized grayscale correlation pattern-matching module and is ideal for solving robot guidance, CMP wafer alignment and other challenging applications.

Also included in MIL 7.0 is support for the new JPEG2000 image compression/decompression standard. Featuring both lossy and lossless modes, JPEG2000 provides superior image quality at the same compression ratio - or a superior compression ratio for the same image quality - than the traditional JPEG standard. These new features, amongst others, add to MIL's already comprehensive list of field-proven functions.

For fast Windows application development, MIL 7.0 comes bundled with ActiveMIL 7.0, a collection of ActiveX controls for managing image capture, processing, analysis, display and archiving. ActiveMIL 7.0 fully integrates into Microsoft Visual Basic or Visual C++ rapid application development environments.

Designed to facilitate development and increase productivity, MIL offers a common API that supports the entire line of Matrox Imaging hardware, including the latest digital additions to the Meteor-II family of frame grabbers - Meteor-II/1394 and Meteor-II/Camera Link. It also offers an intuitive and easy-to-use function set, as well as a choice of programming environments - classic C/C++ or ActiveX - for Microsoft® Windows® 98, Windows® Me, Windows NT® 4.0 and Windows® 2000.

MIL 7.0 will be released in Q4 2001. Run-time licenses are available as well as unlimited licenses for OEM customers interested in volume deployment.

For more information, contact our Media Relations Team.