Getting then manipulating camera images?

[LukeP]

Can someone give me their opinion about the best or easiest way to get the image from the camera and then use it to gather information?

We'd prefer to get the image off the CRIO to modify it and stuff then send information back to the robot. So far the only way I've thought of has been using a FTP server for getting the image, but a mentor suggested I look at SmartDashboard, would that work for what we need? Or are there any other ways or suggestions?
I wouldn't mind processing the images on the robot with just the CRIO, but I'm not sure what that'd require or if the hardware in the CRIO would even allow it.

Last year we had problems with the CRIO stalling and I was told it was because it couldn't handle what we were trying to do? (It just doesn't make sense to me because we weren't doing anything major with it?) I wasn't programming it last year so could someone also give me some ideas of what the delays were? (It might have been just the program, the programmer did it in Labview and I don't know much about it.)

Anyways, sorry for the long post, thanks!