Basler USB Camera byte buffer to image conversion

Question

I have Basler acA3800 USB camera.

            IGrabResult grabResult = camera.StreamGrabber.RetrieveResult(5000, TimeoutHandling.ThrowException);
            // Image grabbed successfully?
            if (grabResult.GrabSucceeded)
            {
                byte[] buffer = grabResult.PixelData as byte[];
                ImageWindow.DisplayImage(0, grabResult);

                pictureBox1.Image = ImageFromRawBgraArray(buffer,3840,2748,PixelFormat.Format8bppIndexed);
                MessageBox.Show(grabResult.PixelTypeValue.ToString());
            }

This code section shows image self window.

I have pixel data of captured image. Original image is good but when I convert it to Image, it corrupt. And here is my conversion function.

    public Image ImageFromRawBgraArray(byte[] arr, int width, int height, PixelFormat pixelFormat)
    {
        var output = new Bitmap(width, height, pixelFormat);
        var rect = new Rectangle(0, 0, width, height);
        var bmpData = output.LockBits(rect, ImageLockMode.ReadWrite, output.PixelFormat);

        // Row-by-row copy
        var arrRowLength = width * Image.GetPixelFormatSize(output.PixelFormat) / 8;
        var ptr = bmpData.Scan0;
        for (var i = 0; i < height; i++)
        {
            Marshal.Copy(arr, i * arrRowLength, ptr, arrRowLength);
            ptr += bmpData.Stride;
        }

        output.UnlockBits(bmpData);
        return output;
    }

I think it is about pixel type. I have selected pixel format of PixelFormat.Format8bppIndexed. The others is not working.

                MessageBox.Show(grabResult.PixelTypeValue.ToString());

This messagebox gives me the pixeltype. and it says "BayerBG8". What does it mean? What should I do to get clear image?

Answer 1

The odd colours you are getting are because Format8bppIndexed is paletted, and you never edit the palette, meaning it retains the default generated Windows palette. But in your case, this palette is irrelevant, because the image is not an 8-bit indexed format; it needs to be processed to convert it to RGB.

A quick google for BayerBG8 got me this page. The Bayer section there shows it's a rather peculiar transformation to use specifically patterned indices on the image as R, G and B.

Wikipedia has a whole article on how this stuff is generally processed, but this YouTube video shows the basics:

Note that this is a sliding window; for the first pixel, the colours are

R G
G B

but for the second pixel, they'll be

G R
B G

and for one row down, the first one will use

G B
R G

You'll end up with an image that is one pixel less wide and high than the given dimensions, since the last pixel on each row and all pixels on the last row won't have the neighbouring data needed to get their full pixel data. There are apparently more advanced algorithms to get around that, but for this method I'll just go over the basic sliding window method.

public static Byte[] BayerToRgb(Byte[] arr, ref Int32 width, ref Int32 height, ref Int32 stride, Boolean greenFirst, Boolean blueRowFirst)
{
    Int32 actualWidth = width - 1;
    Int32 actualHeight = height - 1;
    Int32 actualStride = actualWidth*3;
    Byte[] result = new Byte[actualStride*actualHeight];
    for (Int32 y = 0; y < actualHeight; y++)
    {
        Int32 curPtr = y*stride;
        Int32 resPtr = y*actualStride;
        Boolean blueRow = y % 2 == (blueRowFirst ? 0 : 1);
        for (Int32 x = 0; x < actualWidth; x++)
        {
            // Get correct colour components from sliding window
            Boolean isGreen = (x + y) % 2 == (greenFirst ? 0 : 1);
            Byte cornerCol1 = isGreen ? arr[curPtr + 1] : arr[curPtr];
            Byte cornerCol2 = isGreen ? arr[curPtr + stride] : arr[curPtr + stride + 1];
            Byte greenCol1 = isGreen ? arr[curPtr] : arr[curPtr + 1];
            Byte greenCol2 = isGreen ? arr[curPtr + stride + 1] : arr[curPtr + stride];
            Byte blueCol = blueRow ? cornerCol1 : cornerCol2;
            Byte redCol = blueRow ? cornerCol2 : cornerCol1;
            // 24bpp RGB is saved as [B, G, R].
            // Blue
            result[resPtr + 0] = blueCol;
            // Green
            result[resPtr + 1] = (Byte) ((greenCol1 + greenCol2)/2);
            // Red
            result[resPtr + 2] = redCol;
            curPtr++;
            resPtr+=3;
        }
    }
    height = actualHeight;
    width = actualWidth;
    stride = actualStride;
    return result;
}

The parameters greenFirst and blueRowFirst indicate whether green is the first encountered pixel on the image, and whether the blue pixels are on the first or second row. For your "BG" format, both of these should be false.

From the result of this, with the adjusted width, height and stride, you can convert that to a new image using the method you already used, but with Format24bppRgb as pixel format.

Personally I use a somewhat more advanced method that takes the input stride into account and can handle indexed content. If you're interested, that method can be found here.

Note that the demosaicing method above is very basic, and will show many of the expected artifacts. There are more advanced methods out there to analyse the data and get more accurate results based on how the image was taken, but it'll probably cost you quite some research to figure all that out and implement it yourself.

Here's a little test I did, starting from a Bayer-filtered image I found online which I converted to an 8-bit array (shown here as grayscale image). As you can see, my own demosaicing (second image) is far less accurate than the corrected version they got out of it (third image).