670results about How to "Improve visual quality" patented technology

A multimedia bookmark (VMark) bulletin board service (BBS) system comprises: a web host comprising storage for messages, a web server, and a VMark BBS server; a media host comprising storage for audiovisual (AV) files, and a streaming server; a client comprising storage for VMark, a web browser, a media player and a VMark client; and a VMark server located at the media host or at the client; a communication network connecting the web host, the media host and the client. A method of performing a multimedia bookmark bulletin board service (BBS) comprises: creating a message including a multimedia bookmark for an AV file; and posting the message into the multimedia bookmark BBS. A method of sending multimedia bookmark (VMark) between clients comprises: at a first client, making a VMark indicative of a bookmarked position in an AV program; sending the VMark from the first client to a second client; and playing the program at the second client from the bookmarked position. A system for sharing multimedia content comprises: a multimedia bookmark bulletin board system (BBS); and means for posting a multimedia bookmark to the BBS.

The present invention discloses methods of digitally converting 2D motion pictures or any other 2D image sequences to stereoscopic 3D image data for 3D exhibition. In one embodiment, various types of image data cues can be collected from 2D source images by various methods and then used for producing two distinct stereoscopic 3D views. Embodiments of the disclosed methods can be implemented within a highly efficient system comprising both software and computing hardware. The architectural model of some embodiments of the system is equally applicable to a wide range of conversion, re-mastering and visual enhancement applications for motion pictures and other image sequences, including converting a 2D motion picture or a 2D image sequence to 3D, re-mastering a motion picture or a video sequence to a different frame rate, enhancing the quality of a motion picture or other image sequences, or other conversions that facilitate further improvement in visual image quality within a projector to produce the enhanced images.

A method of designing a multifocal ophthalmic lens with one base focus and at least one additional focus, capable of reducing aberrations of the eye for at least one of the foci after its implantation, comprising the steps of: (i) characterizing at least one corneal surface as a mathematical model; (ii) calculating the resulting aberrations of said corneal surface(s) by employing said mathematical model; (iii) modelling the multifocal ophthalmic lens such that a wavefront arriving from an optical system comprising said lens and said at least one corneal surface obtains reduced aberrations for at least one of the foci. There is also disclosed a method of selecting a multifocal intraocular lens, a method of designing a multifocal ophthalmic lens based on corneal data from a group of patients, and a multifocal ophthalmic lens.

A method and apparatus for scalable coding of a motion vector generated during motion estimation, in which a generated motion vector field is separated into a base layer and an enhancement layer according to pixel accuracies to obtain a layered structure for a motion vector. In addition, the motion vector field has a layered structure including a base layer composed of motion vectors of blocks larger than or equal to a predetermined size and at least one enhancement layer composed of motion vectors of blocks smaller than a predetermined size.

A sensing display device including a display panel and a sensing element is provided. The display panel includes at least a plurality of pixel units, and the pixel units are arranged along a primary direction. The sensing element is disposed on the pixel units and includes at least a plurality of sensor units. Each of the sensor units includes a mesh-pattern electrode, and the mesh-pattern electrode includes a plurality of first traces having conductivity. At least one of the first traces is substantially extended along a first direction, wherein a first angle is formed between the first direction and the primary direction, and the first angle is an acute angle.

Systems and methods are provided for an interactive and collaborative computing device. One example device enables users to establish a communicative link with the interactive and collaborative computing device such that each user may view and share information whether in a local or remote interactive and collaborative environment. The systems and methods described herein further provide a way for users to annotate content displayed on the interactive and collaborative computing device by providing annotative input via another computing device.

A method of generating a character from an image. The method includes providing an image depicting a character, identifying, automatically by a processor, characteristic lines in the image, receiving an indication of a character to be cut from the image, and suggesting border lines for the character to be cut from the image, responsive to the identified characteristic lines and the received indication.

An intraocular correction lens has at least one aspheric surface which when its aberrations are expressed as a linear combination of polynomial terms, is capable of, in combination with a lens in the capsular bag of an eye, reducing similar such aberration terms obtained in a wavefront having passed the cornea, thereby obtaining an eye sufficiently free from aberrations.

Transmittance of light through a pupil or to the retina of a patient's eye is controlled to improve night vision. In one example, this involves providing an ocular device in the form of a contact lens having a central, disk shaped clear window having a diameter that is custom designed based high-order aberrations in an eye and less than the diameter of the patient's pupil at night. The ocular device also has an annular portion that surrounds the disk shaped window portion. The annular portion comprises material that provides reduced light transmittance to provide controlled light transmission at pupil periphery at night and to the retina of a patient. Such controlled light transmittance can reduce photon noise that otherwise can exacerbate halos and ghosts that one can experience at night and / or it can improve night vision contrast. In the case of a contact lens and corneal inlay, light transmittance is controlled across the cornea. In the case of an intraocular lens, light transmittance is controlled across the pupil.

An intraocular lens comprises optical part configured to be implanted in an eye of a subject. The intraocular lens further comprises at least one aspheric surface configured, in combination with a lens in the capsular bag of an eye, to reduce an aberration of a wavefront passing the eye. The aberrations may include astigmatism, coma, and / or spherical aberrations. An aberration of the intraocular lens may be expressed as a linear combination of Zernike polynomial terms that may include a Zernike coefficient a11. The Zernike coefficient a11 may be selected to reduce a spherical aberration of a wavefront passing the eye and / or to compensate for an average value resulting from a predetermined number of estimations of the Zernike coefficient a11 in a population of corneas and capsular bag lenses.

A method of designing a multifocal ophthalmic lens with one base focus and at least one additional focus, capable of reducing aberrations of the eye for at least one of the foci after its implantation, comprising the steps of: (i) characterizing at least one corneal surface as a mathematical model; (ii) calculating the resulting aberrations of said corneal surface(s) by employing said mathematical model; (iii) modelling the multifocal ophthalmic lens such that a wavefront arriving from an optical system comprising said lens and said at least one corneal surface obtains reduced aberrations for at least one of the foci. There is also disclosed a method of selecting a multifocal intraocular lens, a method of designing a multifocal ophthalmic lens based on corneal data from a group of patients, and a multifocal ophthalmic lens.

Quality settings established by an encoder are adjusted based on information associated with regions of interest (“ROIs”). For example, quantization step sizes can be reduced (to improve quality) or increased (to reduce bit rate). ROIs can be identified and quality settings can be adjusted based on input received from a user interface. An overlap setting can be determined for a portion of a picture that corresponds to an ROI overlap area. For example, an overlap setting is chosen from step sizes corresponding to a first overlapping ROI and a second overlapping ROI, or from relative reductions in step size corresponding to the first ROI and the second ROI. ROIs can be parameterized by information (e.g., using data structures) that indicates spatial dimensions of the ROIs and quality adjustment information (e.g., dead zone information, step size information, and quantization mode information).

A method, program product and apparatus for encoding a scalable bit stream from the binarization results of a video sequence by selectively encoding syntax elements and avoiding redundancy in coding. The result is a decrease in the size of the compressed bit stream of an enhancement layer. One method includes determining whether a skipping flag in the base layer macro block of the video data is set, and encoding an enhancement layer macro block of the video data, corresponding to the base layer macro block, with a skipping flag only if the base layer macro block skipping flag is set. Another method includes determining which of a plurality of blocks in a base layer macro block contain zero coefficients, generating a coded block pattern (CBP) of an enhancement layer macro block, where the CBP includes a number of digits equal to the number of blocks in said base layer macro block containing only zero coefficients, and then encoding the CBP of the enhancement layer. Yet another method includes encoding a CBP value of a base layer macro block and differentially encoding a CBP value of an enhancement layer macro block relative to the CBP of the base layer macro block. An additional method includes determining the zero-value coefficients in a block of a base layer, determining whether any of the zero-coefficients become non-zero coefficients in a corresponding block in an enhancement layer, and encoding a coding block flag in an enhancement layer based on that determination.

A volume rendering process is disclosed for improving the visual quality of images produced by rendering and displaying volumetric data in voxel format for the display of three-dimensional (3D) data on a two-dimensional (2D) display with shading and opacity to control the realistic display of images rendered from the voxels. The process includes partitioning the plurality of voxels among a plurality of slices with each slice corresponding to a respective region of the volume. Each voxel includes an opacity value adjusted by applying an opacity curve to the value. The opacity value of each voxel in each cell in the volume is converted into a new visual opacity value that is used to calculate a new visual opacity gradient for only one voxel in the center of each cell. The visual opacity gradient is used to calculate the shading, used to modify the color of individual voxels based on the orientation of opacity isosurfaces passing through each voxel in the volume, in order to create a high quality, realistic image.

An area control section individually sets illumination intensity (light control value) of each backlight cell corresponding to each area of the display screen. A spatial filter corrects the light control values so that spatial distribution of the light control values becomes more moderate between adjoining areas. A black area control section sets the minimum value of the light control value based on a “black area” in the screen. A power control section corrects the light control values so that power consumption of the backlight does not exceed a limit value. A shading control section corrects the light control values to relatively lower brightness in the peripheral part of the screen compared to the central part of the screen. A micro-controller switches the operations of the above light control value correcting sections according to an image display mode selected by the user.

Near infra-red images of natural scenes usually have better contrast and contain rich texture details that may not be perceived in visible light photographs. The contrast and rich texture details form a NIR image corresponding to a visible light image are useful for enhancing the visual quality of the visible light image. To enhance the visual quality of a visible light image using its corresponding near infra-red image, a computer-implemented method computes a weight region mask from the visible light image, transfers contrast data and texture data from the near infra-red image to the visible light image guided by the weighted region mask. The contrast data is computed from the low frequency subbands of the visible light image and corresponding infra-red image after a wavelet transform by matching the histogram of gradient magnitude. The texture data is computed from the high frequency subbands of both images after wavelet transform.

A video encoder is disclosed that includes an encoder circuit, a quantizer circuit and a control circuit. The encoder circuit may be configured to generate a number of coefficient values in response to a video stream and a number of quantized values. The quantizer circuit may be configured to generate the number of quantized values in response to the coefficient values, two or more quantization dead zones and two or more offsets. The control circuit may be configured to set the two or more quantization dead zones and the two or more offsets to different values. The two or more quantization dead zones and the two or more offsets are independently programmable.

Constant-bitrate rate control is very useful for real-time video transmission. However, it is difficult to realize a good CBR rate control in an MPEG4-AVC video codec. According to the invention, an adapted ρ-domain rate control processing for real-time rate control is applied, whereby ρ is the percentage of zero amplitude transform coefficients following quantisation. A couple of tables are used for mapping between the quantization parameters and ρ. A detailed analysis at transform-level is carried out in order to get the slope of the relationship between the bitrate and ρ. The slope of the linear model is constrained by a look-ahead procedure with respect to the neighbour frames or blocks.

In an automatic fingerprint authentication or identification system, the fingerprint image acquisition is severely effected by the limitations of the acquisition process. The two modes of input, viz. scanning inked fingerprints from paper records or directly from a finger using live-scan fingerprint scanners suffer from the following noise sources in the input in addition to standard noise in the camera. Non-uniform ink application, uneven pressure while rolling on the paper or pressing on the scanner surface and external dirt like oil and climatic variations in the moisture content of skin are some of the main causes for the ridges and valleys not to be imaged clearly. This invention deals with a method of learning a set of partitioned least-sqaures filters that can be derived from a given set of images and ground truth pairs as an offline process. The learned filters are convolved with input fingerprint images to obtain the enhanced image.

In various embodiments, an iterative encoding application generates shot encode points based on a first set of encoding points and a first shot sequence associated with a media title. The iterative encoding application performs convex hull operations across the shot encode points to generate a first convex hull. Subsequently, the iterative encoding application generates encoded media sequences based on the first convex hull and a second convex hull that is associated with both a second shot sequence associated with the media title and a second set of encoding points. The iterative encoding application determines a first optimized encoded media and a second optimized encoded media sequence from the encoded media sequences based on, respectively, a first target metric value and a second target metric value for a media metric. Portions of the optimized encoded media sequences are subsequently streamed to endpoint devices during playback of the media title.

The present invention relates to an image fusion method, in particular to a multimodal image fusion method, especially a multi-modal image fusion method based on a generative adversarial network and asuper-resolution network. The method is carried out according to the following steps of designing and constructing the generative adversarial network, wherein the network structure adopts a conceiveddepth residual neural network, and obtaining a generating model through the dynamic balance training of a generator and a discriminator; constructing the super-resolution network based on the convolution layer; inputting the multi-band / multi-mode source image into the generating model to obtain the preliminary fusion image; and then inputting the image into the trained super-resolution network toget the final fusion image with high quality. The method realizes the end-to-end neural network fusion of multi-band / multi-mode images, avoids the difficulties of image multi-scale and multi-direction decomposition and fusion rule design based on prior knowledge, and realizes the adaptive network fusion.

A system and method provide a video coding system for adaptively transcoding videos based on video coding complexity (VCC). A VCC engine of the system is configured to generate a measure of how difficult to encode a source video based on a trained VCC model. A video rate-distortion modeling engine of the system is configured to estimate a rate-distortion model and a scaling model. The VCC model, rate-distortion model and the scaling model are trained on a video corpus of the system. The trained VCC model, rate-distortion model and the scaling model are used by an adaptive bitrate transcoding sub-system to transcode a source video with an optimized bitrate and visual quality. The trained VCC model, rate-distortion model and the scaling model are further used by an adaptive resolution transcoding sub-system to transcode a source video with an optimized resolution and visual quality.

A method, apparatus and computer program products are provided for capturing omnidirectional video with one or more cameras, streaming the video over a network, and rendering the video on a Head Mounted Display (HMD) and more specifically to a method, apparatus, and computer program product for improving the visual quality of viewport-based omnidirectional video streaming. One example method includes selecting a primary viewport, encoding a first representation that covers the primary viewport, and encoding a second representation that provides a gradual picture quality change from a background viewport to the primary viewport.

A method of designing an aspheric ophthalmic lens with both refractive and diffractive powers that is capable of reducing chromatic aberration and at least one monochromatic aberration of an eye comprises combining aspherical refractive and diffractive surfaces, selecting an appropriate eye model, establishing a design lens having at least one aspheric surface with a capacity to reduce monochromatic aberration in said eye model, establishing a diffractive lens element that corrects for chromatic aberration of the model eye; and adjusting the lens surface design in order to obtain a suitably high polychromatic image quality in a form that is weighted to comply with a spectral merit function.

A method of designing a contact lens or other correction for providing presbyopia correction to a patient relies on wavefront aberration measurement data for providing a best form correction. Preferably the correction is in the form of a multifocal translating style alternating vision contact lens or a simultaneous vision style correcting lens. A method for designing a correction for improving a person's vision is directed to correcting higher order aberrations in such a manner that a residual amount of the higher-order rotationally symmetric aberration is greater than a residual amount of the higher-order rotationally asymmetric aberration after the correction. A design method according to the invention is directed to correcting asymmetric higher order aberrations induced by decentering of a multifocal contact lens that has residual spherical aberration which provides increased depth of field.

For processing image data generated for a color filter array, classifiers are generated from the image data. A predetermined color component is determined by directional-interpolating the image data depending on the classifiers. Chrominance components are generated from linear-interpolated image data and the directional-interpolated predetermined color component. The chrominance components are directional-interpolated, and color components are extracted from the directional-interpolated chrominance components.

Methods and apparatus for directional texture generation using flow-guided, sample-based texture synthesis. A texture synthesis directional texture generation method may, for example, be used to design hair or hairstyles. The method may obtain one or more strokes, one or more optional masks, one or more optional user maps, and directional texture samples. A target region and one or more samples may be divided into patches. For each patch in the target region, a matching patch from the samples may be located according to one or more features to generate a similarity map. The patches in the target region may then be replaced with the patches from the samples according to the similarity map. To match sample patches to target region patches based on features such as color and brightness, a procedural directional texture generation method may be used as a pre-processing step.

The present invention relates to a plastic component having a visible part that is made in one single layer from a plastic molding compound and that comprises a transparent or translucent matrix, and having a light source that comprises one or more lamp elements, situated under the surface of the visible part. The visible part is implemented as essentially opaque in relation to daylight and transparent or translucent in relation to the light emitted by the lamp elements. The visible part also contains admixed effect pigments and defines a surface appearance image which, when the light source is inactive, essentially corresponds to the surface appearance image of the remaining wall of an object in which the plastic component is installed and which, when the light source is active, is essentially determined by the light source activity. The plastic component according to the invention is characterized in that the lamp elements are selected from a group which comprises light-emitting diodes, organic light-emitting diodes, and fiber-optic light systems, the lamp elements at least partially being embedded in the plastic molding compound of the visible part. The manifold uses of this plastic component comprise installation in vehicles, paneling elements, and furniture, as well as in housings of greatly varying devices.

An ophthalmic lens with premium vision corrections provides significantly improved visual acuity and contrast sensitivity. The premium vision corrections include precisely correcting for two aberration mode sets simultaneously, second-order astigmatism and fourth-order spherical aberration, instead of correcting for only second-order astigmatism or simultaneously correcting for all aberrations present. Fourth-order astigmatism, sixth-order spherical aberration, and third-order coma are additionally corrected in other premium vision correction schemes. In addition, methods are provided for prescribing and fabricating the premium vision lenses to permit mass customization.

A method of designing an aspheric ophthalmic lens with both refractive and diffractive powers that is capable of reducing chromatic aberration and at least one monochromatic aberration of an eye comprises combining aspherical refractive and diffractive surfaces, selecting an appropriate eye model, establishing a design lens having at least one aspheric surface with a capacity to reduce monochromatic aberration in said eye model, establishing a diffractive lens element that corrects for chromatic aberration of the model eye; and adjusting the lens surface design in order to obtain a suitably high polychromatic image quality in a form that is weighted to comply with a spectral merit function.