SynthPix: A lightspeed PIV image generator

TL;DR

SynthPix is a high-performance, parallel synthetic image generator for Particle Image Velocimetry, enabling on-the-fly data streaming for diverse applications and robustness testing.

Contribution

It introduces SynthPix, a novel JAX-based PIV image generator optimized for speed, parallelism, and integration into learning and benchmarking workflows.

Findings

Supports real-time image streaming for PIV analysis

Compatible with various application scenarios including laboratory and riverine environments

Enables rapid systematic robustness evaluation over nuisance factors

Abstract

We describe SynthPix, a synthetic image generator for Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) with a focus on performance and parallelism on accelerators, implemented in JAX. SynthPix produces PIV image pairs from prescribed flow fields while exposing a configuration interface aligned with common PIV imaging and acquisition parameters (e.g., seeding density, particle image size, illumination nonuniformity, noise, blur, and timing). In contrast to offline dataset generation workflows, SynthPix is built to stream images on-the-fly directly into learning and benchmarking pipelines, enabling data-hungry methods and closed-loop procedures -- such as adaptive sampling and acquisition/parameter co-design -- without prohibitive storage and input-output costs. We demonstrate that SynthPix is compatible with a broad range of application scenarios, including controlled laboratory experiments and riverine image velocimetry, and supports rapid sweeps over nuisance factors for systematic robustness evaluation. SynthPix is a tool that supports the flow quantification community and in this paper we describe the main ideas behind the software package.