The core of Horus is a C++ library for image and video analysis. The C++ library is designed to have a broad coverage of functionality while keeping the source code a small as possible. The library makes heavy use of the C++ template mechanism to implement common patterns in image processing operations without loss of efficiency.

The CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) layer provides applications with (interactive) access to the C++ library from several programming languages on different platforms. Via the database server, results of the analysis are stored in an Oracle database. The CORBA layer also provides access to scarce hardware resources such as image acquisition boards and TV receivers. In fact, the applications contain their own CORBA server to provide other applications access to essential internal data. In essence, we use CORBA to integrate applications and servers into one platform for multimedia research and application development.

Contact : koelma@science.uva.nl