IMAQ image out- what's the best way?

[MattA1]

Hello forum,

I'm developing an interface to acquire a square image from an NI-DAQmx PCI 6221 on LabVIEW 7.0 and Windows XP. At present I am simply collecting my information from a physical sine wave generator on the bench, but eventually this will be used to process images from a CARS microscope.

My problem is that I am trying to figure out a user-friendly way of "buffering" all previously acquired images in the session, and then choosing one several of them to save as an uncompressed BMP. At the moment I am using two image displays; one for the whole image overview (picture indicator) and one to pan around and zoom on fine details (IMAQ image indicator). The IMAQ image indicator is also outputting to an IMAQ browser window, which I have modified based on the Browser Example.vi which ships with LV. However, there are several difficulties with this method.

Firstly, I'm not sure how to select an indexed image from the browser itself to save; the only way I can think of would end up wiring the IMAQ image out to the BMP writing VI, but that would only save the current image, and not necessarily the one the user wants.

Secondly, I haven't quite got the hang of combining case structures, event structures and while loops yet, so there's a very specific order things have to be done in or the program hangs, (e.g.. you must press the buttons: Acquisition - Unlock Browser - Stop in that order, nothing else works properly), and I'm pretty sure I've set the browser up wrong because every time I finish with the acquisition window, an error message appears.

Thirdly, it would be nice if I could hide the browser window until I've finished with the other window, but I can't seem to get IMAQ windshow to do that. I have boolean constants wired to Hide/Show and Set/Get but no matter what combination of false and true I use, the window appears anyway.

I will attach the VI and subVIs to this post in a zipped folder, and would appreciate any help you could give me. General constructive criticism on my wiring, methods, Rude Goldbergs, etc, would also be appreciated if anyone has the time, as I'm still pretty new to LabVIEW.

Thanks in advance!