In 2009, we were selected to design and install an automated measurement system to measure the "height" of scallops. The manual method used by NOAA personnel is shown below. The goal of the system was to evaluate the use of cameras to automate and improve the measurement process.
Our system consisted of a transparent belt with a backlight to produce a binary image of the scallop in silhouette. The ISG 1394 LightWise camera ran continuously to provide images which were processed using functions from the LabVIEW Vision Library to extract the area and effective diameter of each scallop. Final results showed excellent consistency with the actual shell height. [Click images to enlarge]
The basic algorithm runs at 30 frames per second. A 'soft trigger" determines if a new scallop has entered the camera field of view (moving right to left). It then saves and crops the image for analysis. Small particles are filtered and scallops are identified. The leftmost scallop is isolated for measurement. [+ Click any image to enlarge]