5239 results about "Image enhancement" patented technology

An intelligent document recognition-based document management system includes modules for image capture, image enhancement, image identification, optical character recognition, data extraction and quality assurance. The system captures data from electronic documents as diverse as facsimile images, scanned images and images from document management systems. It processes these images and presents the data in, for example, a standard XML format. The document management system processes both structured document images (ones which have a standard format) and unstructured document images (ones which do not have a standard format). The system can extract images directly from a facsimile machine, a scanner or a document management system for processing.

The present invention is a system and method for detecting facial features of humans in a continuous video and superimposing virtual objects onto the features automatically and dynamically in real-time. The suggested system is named Facial Enhancement Technology (FET). The FET system consists of three major modules, initialization module, facial feature detection module, and superimposition module. Each module requires demanding processing time and resources by nature, but the FET system integrates these modules in such a way that real time processing is possible. The users can interact with the system and select the objects on the screen. The superimposed image moves along with the user's random motion dynamically. The FET system enables the user to experience something that was not possible before by augmenting the person's facial images. The hardware of the FET system comprises the continuous image-capturing device, image processing and controlling system, and output display system.

A novel system for a new kind of electronic news gathering and videography is described. In particular, a camera that captures light passing through the center of a lens of an eye of the user is described. Such an electronic newsgathering system allows the eye itself to, in effect, function as a camera. In wearable embodiments of the invention, a journalist wearing the apparatus becomes, after adaptation, an entity that seeks, without conscious thought or effort, an optimal point of vantage and camera orientation. Moreover, the journalist can easily become part of a human intelligence network, and draw upon the intellectual resources and technical photographic skills of a large community. Because of the journalist's ability to constantly see the world through the apparatus of the invention, which may also function as an image enhancement device, the apparatus behaves as a true extension of the journalist's mind and body, giving rise to a new genre of documentary video. In this way, it functions as a seamless communications medium that uses a reality-based user-interface.

A method of digital image enhancement and sharpening (11, 12) which may be applied to restoration of blurred digital images of arbitrary origin. The method uses a specially formulated constraint (15) to reconstruct the original images. In particular, the constraint of the present method minimizes the area where strong image parameter variations and discontinuities occur. This new constraint is called a minimum gradient support (MGS) constraint. The MGS constraint generates a stable sharp solution of the linear ill-posed image restoration equation with an arbitrary blurring operator.

A digital image processing technique is for detecting and correcting visual imperfections using a reference image. A main image and one or more reference images having a temporal and / or spatial overlap and / or proximity with the original image are captured. Device information, image data and / or meta data are analyzed of the one or more reference images relating to a defect in the main image. The device corrects the defect based on the information, image data and / or meta-data to create an enhanced version of the main image.

A system and method for imaging a document, and using a reference document to place pieces of the document in their correct relative position and resize such pieces in order to generate a single unified image, including the electronic capturing a document with one or multiple images using an imaging device, the performing of pre-processing of said images to optimize the results of subsequent image recognition, enhancement, and decoding, the comparing of said images against a database of reference documents to determine the most closely fitting reference document, and the applying of knowledge from said closely fitting reference document to adjust geometrically the orientation, shape, and size of said electronically captured images so that said images correspond as closely as possibly to said reference document.

A method for padding, filtering, denoising, image enhancing and increased time-frequency acquisition is described for digitized data of a data set where unknown data is estimated using real data by adding unknown data points in a manner that the padding routine can estimate the interior data set including known and unknown data to a given accuracy on the known data points. The method also provides filtering using non-interpolating, well-tempered distributed approximating functional (NIDAF)-low-band-pass filters. The method also provides for symmetric and / or anti-symmetric extension of the data set so that the data set may be better refined and can be filtered by Fourier and other type of low frequency or harmonic filters.

A method of presenting images to a user of a vehicle navigation system includes accessing location data indicating a particular location included within a route determined by a vehicle navigation system and accessing corresponding direction data, obtaining a captured image based on the accessed location and direction data, and displaying the obtained image to the user. The obtained captured image corresponds approximately to a driver's perspective from within a vehicle and depicts a view of or from the particular location along the particular direction indicated by the direction data. Location data includes spatial coordinates such as GPS data, a street index, and / or other locative data either absolute or relative to a particular street or intersection. Direction data includes a travel direction of the vehicle upon a street corresponding to the particular location. Additionally, data indicating time-of-day, season-of-year, ambient environmental conditions, etc., may be used to obtain and / or correlate obtainable images.

The present invention is embodied in a system and method for performing spectral analysis of a digital signal having a discrete duration by spectrally decomposing the digital signal at predefined frequencies uniformly distributed over a sampling frequency interval into complex frequency coefficients so that magnitude and phase information at each frequency is immediately available to produce a modulated complex lapped transform (MCLT). The present invention includes a MCLT processor, an acoustic echo cancellation device and a noise reducer integrated with an encoder / decoder device.

The present invention facilitates solid object reconstruction from a two-dimensional image. If an object is of known and regular shape, information about the object can be extracted from at least one view by utilizing appropriate constraints and measuring a distance between a camera and the object and / or by estimating a scale factor between a camera image and a real world image. The same device can perform both the image capture and the distance measurement or the scaling factor estimation. The following processes can be performed for object identification: parameter estimation; image enhancement; detection of line segments; aggregation of short line segments into segments; detection of proximity clusters of segments; estimation of a convex hull of at least one cluster; derivation of an object outline from the convex hull; combination of the object outline, shape constraints, and distance value.

Systems and methods for measuring overlay error in a video-based augmented reality enhanced surgical navigation system are presented. In exemplary embodiments of the present invention the system and method include providing a test object, creating a virtual object which is a computer model of the test object, registering the test object, capturing images of control points on the test object at various positions within an augmented reality system's measurement space, and extracting positions of control points on the test object from the captured images, calculating the positions of the control points in virtual image, and calculating the positional difference of positions of corresponding control points between the respective video and virtual images of the test object. The method and system can further assess if the overlay accuracy meets an acceptable standard. In exemplary embodiments of the present invention a method and system are provided to identify the various sources of error in such systems and assess their effects on system accuracy. In exemplary embodiments of the present invention, after the accuracy of an AR system is determined, the AR system may be used as a tool to evaluate the accuracy of other processes in a given application, such as registration error.

The present invention is generally related to image enhancement and augmented reality (“AR”). More specifically, this invention presents a method and an apparatus for static image enhancement and the use of an optical display and sensing technologies to superimpose, in real time, graphical information upon a user's magnified view of the real world.

A digital image processing technique detects and corrects visual imperfections using a reference image. A main image and one or more reference images having a temporal and / or spatial overlap and / or proximity with the original image are captured. Device information, image data and / or meta data are analyzed of the one or more reference images relating to a defect in the main image. The device corrects the defect based on the information, image data and / or meta-data to create an enhanced version of the main image.

A polarization based diagnostic device (200) for optically examining the medical condition of tissue (290) comprises an illumination optical system (205), comprising a light source (220) and beam shaping optics. An optical detection system (210) comprises imaging optics and an optical detector array, which detects light from the tissue. Polarizing optics provided in both the illumination optical system and the optical detection system are crossed and pass orthogonal polarization states. Iterative rotational means rotate the orthogonal polarization states relative to the tissue being examined. Image enhancement means includes image processing, sequential multi-spectral illumination and imaging, and image focus control to facilitate quality imaging at varying depths within the tissue. A controller (215) operates the light source, the detector array, the multi-spectral illumination and imaging, image focus control, and image processing.

A pixel image enhancement system which operates on color or monochrome source images to produce output cells the same size as the source pixels but not spatially coincident or one-to-one correspondent with them. By operating upon a set of input pixels surrounding each output cell with a set of logic operations implementing unique Boolean equations, the system generates "case numbers" characterizing inferred-edge pieces within each output cell. A rendering subsystem, responsive to the case numbers and source-pixel colors, then produces signals for driving an output device (printer or display) to display the output cells, including the inferred-edge pieces, to the best of the output device's ability and at its resolution.

The invention discloses a real-time panoramic image stitching method of aerial videos shot by an unmanned plane. The method comprises the steps of: utilizing a video acquisition card to acquire images which are transmitted to a base station in real time by an unmanned plane through microwave channels, carrying out key frame selection on an image sequence, and carrying out image enhancement on key frames; in the image splicing process, firstly carrying out characteristic detection and interframe matching on image frames by adopting an SURF (speeded up robust features) detection method with good robustness; then reducing the series-multiplication accumulative errors of images in a frame-to-mosaic image transformation mode, determining images which are not adjacent in time sequence but adjacent in space on a flight path according to the GPS (global positioning system) position information of the unmanned plane, optimizing the frame-to-mosaic transformation relation, determining image overlapping areas, thereby realizing image fusion and the panoramic image construction and realizing real-time effect of carrying out flying and stitching simultaneously; and in image transformation, based on adjacent frame information in a vision field and adjacent frame information in airspace, optimizing image transformation to obtain the accurate panoramic images. The stitching method has good real-time performance, is fast and accurate and meets the requirements of application occasions in multiple fields.

A method for padding, filtering, denoising, image enhancing and increased time-frequency acquisition is described for digitized data of a data set is described where unknown data is estimated using real data by adding unknown data points in a manner that the padding routine can estimate the interior data set including known and unknown data to a given accuracy on the known data points. The method also provides filtering using non-interpolating, well-tempered distributed approximating functional (NIDAF)-low-band-pass filters. The method also provides for symmetric and / or anti-symmetric extension of the data set so that the data set may be better refined and can be filtered by Fourier and other type of low frequency or harmonic filters.

The invention discloses an automatic image defogging method based on dark primary color, which is used for solving the problem of information loss because the traditional defogging method highlights details by improving foggy day image contrast. The method provided by the invention comprises: A. calculating the dark primary color of the primary fog images and relevant atmosphere light value; B. according to the luminance component image of the original fog image, calculating a transmission image reflecting local fog concentration in an atmospheric scattering model; and C. determining the defogged primary image according to the fog image, the transmission image and the atmosphere light value in the atmospheric scattering model. Because of being built on the basis of a physical model, the invention can process various fog images in a self-adaption mode; and defogged images have favorable edge details and ideal contrast, and the clarifying effect is superior to the traditional defogging method based on image enhancement.

A primary waveguide and a coupling waveguide are arranged so a user can view light from a forward scene through the primary waveguide. An image source generates an image which is diffractively coupled into the primary waveguide and internally reflected to an exit area for diffraction towards the user. Light from the forward looking scene is diffracted into the primary waveguide to be internally reflected and coupled to a image intensifier tube assembly. The image intensifier tube assembly enhances light from the forward looking scene and drives the image source such that an image of the enhanced light is overlaid on light from a forward scene at exit area.

A video encoding apparatus and method and a video decoding apparatus and method are provided. The video encoding apparatus includes a base layer encoding unit generating a base layer bitstream including a quantization level of video data and a base quantization parameter corresponding to a base bit-depth, an enhancement layer encoding unit generating an enhancement layer bitstream including a refined quantization parameter for refining the difference between an extended bit-depth and the base bit-depth, and a bitstream combining unit combining the base layer bitstream and the enhancement layer bitstream to generate the scalable bitstream. The video decoding apparatus includes a base layer decoding unit decoding a base layer bitstream including a quantization level of video data and a base quantization parameter corresponding to a base bit-depth in a received bitstream to obtain a base restoration image, an enhancement layer decoding unit decoding an enhancement layer bitstream including a refined quantization parameter for refining the difference between an extended bit-depth and the base bit-depth in the received bitstream, and a bit-depth restoration unit obtaining an extended restoration image corresponding to an extended bit-depth by using the decoded quantization level, the decoded base quantization parameter, and the decoded refined quantization parameter.

An automated inspection system particularly adapted for detection and discrimination of surface irregularities of specularly reflecting and other materials, such as are employed in laminate chip carriers and printed circuit boards, includes an area scan image sensor allowing illumination sources to surround an area of a surface being inspected. The illumination source preferably provides either or both bright field and dark field illumination of the surface; developing generally complementary images of surface irregularities. A self-registering rules-driven process for developing inspection masks reduces alignment operations and improves performance. Image enhancement and morphological operations to detect surface irregularities are performed by digital signal processing, preferably using a dedicated vision processor. Masks screen potential defects to critical mounting and bonding surfaces accurately without requiring alignment of data or reference images to acquired images. Since potential defects are copied from acquired images and stored, verification of defects may be performed without further access to the inspected part and without removal of the part to another specialized apparatus, simplifying processing and increasing throughput and operator efficiency.

Imaging apparatus (20, 44) includes an array (22) of optical sensing elements (24), characterized by a pitch, which is adapted to generate a signal in response to optical radiation that is incident on the elements. Objective optics (26, 46), which have an optical axis (134) and are characterized by a cylindrical symmetry about the axis, are arranged to focus the optical radiation from an object onto the array with a point spread function (PSF) having an extent greater than twice the pitch of the array at an optimal focus of the objective optics.

A primary waveguide and a coupling waveguide are arranged so a user can view light from a forward scene through the primary waveguide. An image source generates an image which is diffractively coupled into the primary waveguide and internally reflected to an exit area for diffraction towards the user. Light from the forward looking scene is diffracted into the primary waveguide to be internally reflected and coupled to a image intensifier tube assembly. The image intensifier tube assembly enhances light from the forward looking scene and drives the image source such that an image of the enhanced light is overlaid on light from a forward scene at exit area.

This disclosure provides an image processing method and system for recognizing barcodes and / or product labels. According to an exemplary embodiment, the method uses a multifaceted detection process that includes both image enhancement of a candidate barcode region and other product label information associated with a candidate barcode region to identify a product label, where the candidate barcode region includes a nonreadable barcode. According to one exemplary application, a store profile is generated based on the identifications of the product labels which are associated with a location of a product within a store.

A method and Electro-Optical (EO) system for processing imagery comprising selecting a first frame of data as a template frame; capturing a second frame of data using the EO system, for a plurality of pixels of the second frame, correlating the plurality of pixels of the second frame with pixels of the template frame to generate a plurality of shift vectors, one for each pixel of the plurality of pixels of the second frame, registering the second frame with the template frame by interpolating the second frame using the plurality of shift vectors and re-sampling at least a portion of the second frame to produce a registered frame, re-sampling the template frame, and combining the re-sampled template frame and the registered frame to generate an averaged frame.

Methods and apparatus for improving the resolution of an electronic imaging device having an array of pixels. Sub-pixel dimension movements between an object and the array of pixels are made, and an image is formed at each position. Resulting shifted images are combined to yield an effective resolution corresponding to an array having smaller pixels. Such methods and apparatus allow optical systems with existing pixel devices to form effective images of smaller feature sizes.

A method of determining a position of a target region in a medical procedure includes acquiring an input image of a target region, enhancing a feature of the input image, registering the input image with a template, and determining a position of the target region in the input image based on the registering. A method of monitoring a position of an object includes providing a reference image of the object, acquiring a first image of the object, determining a first composite image based on the reference image and the first image, and determining whether the object has moved based at least on the first composite image.