| Patent application number | Description | Published |
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| 20080291282 | Camera Calibration - Online camera calibration methods have been proposed whereby calibration information is extracted from the images that the system captures during normal operation and is used to continually update system parameters. However, such existing methods do not cope well with structure-poor scenes having little texture and/or 3D structure such as in a home or office environment. By considering camera families (a set of cameras that are manufactured at least partially in a common manner) it is possible to provide calibration methods which are suitable for use with structure-poor scenes. A prior distribution of camera parameters for a family of cameras is estimated and used to obtain accurate calibration results for individual cameras of the camera family even where the calibration is carried out online, in an environment which is structure-poor. | 11-27-2008 |
| 20080317331 | Recognizing Hand Poses and/or Object Classes - There is a need to provide simple, accurate, fast and computationally inexpensive methods of object and hand pose recognition for many applications. For example, to enable a user to make use of his or her hands to drive an application either displayed on a tablet screen or projected onto a table top. There is also a need to be able to discriminate accurately between events when a user's hand or digit touches such a display from events when a user's hand or digit hovers just above that display. A random decision forest is trained to enable recognition of hand poses and objects and optionally also whether those hand poses are touching or not touching a display surface. The random decision forest uses image features such as appearance, shape and optionally stereo image features. In some cases, the training process is cost aware. The resulting recognition system is operable in real-time. | 12-25-2008 |
| 20080317386 | Playback of Digital Images - A method of displaying digital images is described in which a display length indicator is received and digital images are accessed. A set of digital images are selected from the accessed digital images in accordance with the display length indicator and displayed in a predetermined order. The method may be performed by a computer program, which may be embodied on a computer readable medium. | 12-25-2008 |
| 20090284611 | Transferring of Digital Images - A method of transferring images from a first device to a second device and computer program code for performing this method is described. A connection characteristic for a connection between the first & second devices is determined and at least one image is selected from a plurality of images on the first device for transfer dependent upon both the connection characteristic and image selection criteria. The selected image(s) are then transferred over the connection from the first device to the second device. | 11-19-2009 |
| 20090290795 | Geodesic Image and Video Processing - A method of geodesic image and video processing is proposed. In an embodiment, the method uses a geodesic distance transform to construct an image filter. The filter can be used in a variety of image editing operations such as segmentation, denoising, texture smoothing, image stitching and cartooning. In one embodiment, the method may be made efficient by utilizing parallelism of the algorithm to carry out processing steps on at least two processing cores concurrently. This efficiency may enable high-resolution images and video to be processed at ‘real time’ rates without the need for specialist hardware. | 11-26-2009 |
| 20100119147 | IMAGE SEGMENTATION - Segmentation of foreground from background layers in an image may be provided by a segmentation process which may be based on one or more factors including motion, color, contrast, and the like. Color, motion, and optionally contrast information may be probabilistically fused to infer foreground and/or background layers accurately and efficiently. A likelihood of motion vs. non-motion may be automatically learned from training data and then fused with a contrast-sensitive color model. Segmentation may then be solved efficiently by an optimization algorithm such as a graph cut. Motion events in image sequences may be detected without explicit velocity computation. | 05-13-2010 |
| 20100171846 | Automatic Capture Modes - An image capture device is described which is operable in any one of a number of capture modes. The device comprises a camera, a memory and a processor. The memory stores a plurality of sets of capture triggers, with each set of capture triggers being associated with one of the plurality of capture modes. The processor selects one of the plurality of capture modes, such that the device is operable in the selected capture mode. In the selected capture mode, an image is captured automatically when a capture trigger within the associated set of capture triggers is satisfied. | 07-08-2010 |
| 20100201681 | Image Editing Consistent with Scene Geometry - Image editing which is consistent with geometry of a scene depicted in the image is described. In an embodiment a graphical user interface (GUI) is provided to enable a user to simply and quickly specify four corners of a rectangular frame drawn onto a source image using the GUI. In embodiments, the four corners are used to compute parameters of a virtual camera assumed to capture the image of the drawn frame. Embodiments of an image processing system are described which use the virtual camera parameters to control editing of the source image in ways consistent with the 3D geometry of the scene depicted in that image. In some embodiments out of bounds images are formed and/or realistic-looking shadows are synthesized. In examples, users are able to edit images and the virtual camera parameters are dynamically recomputed and used to update the edited image. | 08-12-2010 |
| 20100226547 | Multi-Modal Tone-Mapping of Images - A system for multi-modal mapping of images is described. Embodiments are described where the image mapping system is used for visualizing high dynamic range images such as medical images, satellite images, high dynamic range photographs and the like and also for compressing such images. In examples, high bit-depth images are tone-mapped for display on equipment of lower bit-depth without loss of detail. In embodiments, the image mapping system computes statistics describing an input image and fits a multi-modal model to those statistics efficiently. In embodiments, the multi-modal model is a Gaussian mixture model and a plurality of sigmoid functions corresponding to the multi-modal model are obtained. In an embodiment the sigmoid functions are added to form a tone-mapping function which is used to transform a high bit-depth image such as 16 or 12 bits per pixel to a low bit-depth image such as 8 bits per pixel. | 09-09-2010 |
| 20100272367 | IMAGE PROCESSING USING GEODESIC FORESTS - Image processing using geodesic forests is described. In an example, a geodesic forest engine determines geodesic shortest-path distances between each image element and a seed region specified in the image in order to form a geodesic forest data structure. The geodesic distances take into account gradients in the image of a given image modality such as intensity, color, or other modality. In some embodiments, a 1D processing engine carries out 1D processing along the branches of trees in the geodesic forest data structure to form a processed image. For example, effects such as ink painting, edge-aware texture flattening, contrast-aware image editing, forming animations using geodesic forests and other effects are achieved using the geodesic forest data structure. In some embodiments the geodesic forest engine uses a four-part raster scan process to achieve real-time processing speeds and parallelization is possible in many of the embodiments. | 10-28-2010 |
| 20100303380 | Automatic Dust Removal In Digital Images - Methods and a processing device are provided for restoring pixels damaged by artifacts caused by dust, or other particles, entering a digital image capturing device. A user interface may be provided for a user to indicate an approximate location of an artifact appearing in a digital image. Dust attenuation may be estimated and an inverse transformation, based on the estimated dust attenuation, may be applied to damaged pixels in order to recover an estimate of the underlying digital image. One or many candidate source patch may be selected based on having smallest pixel distances, with respect to a target patch area. The damaged pixels included in the target patch area may be considered when calculating the pixel distance with respect to candidate source patches. RGB values of corresponding pixels of source patches may be used to restore the damaged pixels included in the target patch area. | 12-02-2010 |
| 20110064303 | Object Recognition Using Textons and Shape Filters - Given an image of structured and/or unstructured objects, semantically meaningful areas are automatically partitioned from the image, each area labeled with a specific object class. Shape filters are used to enable capturing of some or all of the shape, texture, and/or appearance context information. A shape filter comprises one or more regions of arbitrary shape, size, and/or position within a bounding area of an image, paired with a specified texton. A texton comprises information describing the texture of a patch of surface of an object. In a training process a sub-set of possible shape filters is selected and incorporated into a conditional random field model of object classes. The conditional random field model is then used for object detection and recognition. | 03-17-2011 |
| 20110141121 | Parallel Processing for Distance Transforms - Parallel processing for distance transforms is described. In an embodiment a raster scan algorithm is used to compute a distance transform such that each image element of a distance image is assigned a distance value. This distance value is a shortest distance from the image element to the seed region. In an embodiment two threads execute in parallel with a first thread carrying out a forward raster scan over the distance image and a second thread carrying out a backward raster scan over the image. In an example, a thread pauses when a cross-over condition is met until the other thread meets the condition after which both threads continue. In embodiments distances may be computed in Euclidean space or along geodesics defined on a surface. In an example, four threads execute two passes in parallel with each thread carrying out a raster scan over a different quarter of the image. | 06-16-2011 |
