Hello Skytalker,
The software and hardware that you need depends on your application and the type of camera that you are using. I would suggest taking a look at http://www.ni.com/vision. Here, you can find details on the vision products National Instruments offers. The Vision Development Module provides functions that can be used for particle analysis and has other image processing capabilities.
I hope this helps.
Vivek Nath
National Instruments
Applications Engineer
Machine Vision