Abstract: This invention relates to an apparatus and a method for optically stimulating and detecting the electrical activity of at least one cell (2A, . . . , 2D) in a cell culture (2) placed on a substrate (3). The apparatus (1) is capable of exciting a bio-activatable molecule (16) positioned in the vicinity of at least one cell (2A, . . . , 2D) through the introduction of a light stimulus in at least one transmission means (5, 5A, . . . , 5D), the latter being located in relation to said at least one cell (2A, . . . , 2D) in such a way that the light stimulus is propagated within said transmission means (5, 5A, . . . , 5D). The apparatus according to the invention has the feature of detecting a light component which is radiated by a fluorescent marker due to the generation of said electrical activity of said at least one cell (2A, . . . , 2D), said light component being propagated through said at least one transmission means (5, 5A, . . . , 5D).

Abstract: A device for accelerating calculation of the centroids of markers in a system for real time motion analysis is described, said system utilising images taken cyclically by a plurality of television cameras to follow the movements through time of a plurality of markers, each of which occupies a plurality of elementary units (pixels) of each television image frame: the centroid of these pixels indicates the instant position of the corresponding marker. The device according to the invention selects from the pixels of a set zone of a television image frame those occupied by the same marker and transfers these simultaneously to the circuit for calculation of the centroid.

Abstract: The optical correlator for incoherent light images herein described can be used in real time image processing systems to recognize objects having selected shapes and sizes and to determine their coordinates.

Abstract: A modularly expansible system is disclosed for real time processing of a TV image or display, the system being particularly useful for the acquisition of coordinates of known shape objects, or objects with any shape and spatial lay, incorporating a correlation means which comprises a plurality of cascade connected stages, among which a stage adapted to parallelize a preset number of TV raster lines, at least one column delay line stage, at least one pre-adder stage, and a totalizing adder stage. The inventive system may be readily expanded by interconnecting substantially alike modules, to thus find useful industrial scale application in a range of different fields, from the medical field to robotics. It may also be easily implemented at different levels of sophisticated design to practically meet any needs for real time in-line acquisition of known shape object coordinates.