Systems and methods for processing image data associated with line detection

Abstract

In a particular embodiment, a method includes receiving line segment data at a processing core. The line segment data is associated with multiple candidate line segments associated with a first group of pixels of an image. The line segment data includes an angle value and / or a distance value for each of the multiple candidate line segments. The method further includes identifying, at the processing core, a set of line segments of the multiple candidate line segments by comparing angle values and / or distance values associated with the multiple candidate line segments. The method also includes determining, at the processing core, a representative line segment based on the set of line segments of the multiple candidate line segments. The method further includes storing, by the processing core, line segment information based on the representative line segment.

Description

I. FIELD[0001]The present disclosure is generally related to processing image data to detect a line included in an image.II. DESCRIPTION OF RELATED ART[0002]Advances in technology have resulted in smaller apparatuses and more powerful computing devices. For example, there currently exist a variety of portable personal computing devices, including wireless computing devices, such as portable wireless telephones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and paging devices that are small, lightweight, and easily carried by users. More specifically, portable wireless telephones, such as cellular telephones and internet protocol (IP) telephones, can communicate voice and data packets over wireless networks. Further, many such wireless telephones include other types of devices that are incorporated therein. For example, a wireless telephone can also include a digital still camera, a digital video camera, a digital recorder, and an audio file player. Also, such wireless telephones can process e...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

This patent describes a method of improving the speed and accuracy of detecting line segments in an image. By using a GPU to process image data, the amount of histogram data generated by the GPU fits within a cache memory. The GPU divides the image into multiple tiles and uses reference points to determine distance values when generating angle and distance pairs. The detected line segments within each tile are consolidated prior to merging detected line segments across multiple tiles, which improves the accuracy of the resultant line segment and reduces the number of detected line segments to be processed by an inter tile merger, thus increasing the speed of identifying global lines. The patent also describes a computer-readable medium and a processing system that performs these line segment detection and merging tasks using multiple processors, reducing power consumption and processing time.

Problems solved by technology

The 2D histogram is related to a size of the image and may also be related to a maximum length of a detected line and, for large images, the 2D histogram may consume a large amount of memory space.

Additionally, a processor of the wireless device may have to perform an exhaustive and time consuming search of data within the memory space to detect one or more lines based on the 2D histogram.

Because of the large amount of memory space and the processing power needed to detect the one or more lines, implementing the Hough Transform is problematic when performed by a mobile device (e.g., the wireless device) which has limited memory space and limited processing power.

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