Patents Represented by Attorney Kristine E. Matthews
  • Patent number: 8185334
    Abstract: Aspects of the present invention are related to systems and methods for removing spikes and/or speckle noise from a digital signal. In some embodiments of the present invention, an input signal is filtered according to a first low pass filter. The low pass filtered signal, also considered a first local-mean signal, is subtracted from the input signal, thereby producing an AC signal. A maximum of a first region associated with the AC signal and a maximum of a second region associated with the AC signal are determined. When the maximum of the first region and the maximum of the second region meet a comparison criterion, coefficients for a second low pass filter are determined. The input signal is filtered according to the second low pass filter, thereby producing a second local-mean signal, and a second AC signal is produced by subtracting, from the input signal, the second local-mean signal.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 5, 2009
    Date of Patent: May 22, 2012
    Assignee: Tektronix, Inc.
    Inventor: Kevin M. Ferguson
  • Patent number: 8184163
    Abstract: Embodiments of the present invention comprise methods and systems for detecting and locating skipped frames in a test video sequence in relation to a reference video sequence. Some embodiments comprise identifying pairs of temporally aligned reference and test segments. An alignment offset and freeze-frame count associated with each segment pair is received and used to calculate a number of skipped frames between a first segment pair and a second segment pair, the second segment pair being temporally subsequent to the first segment pair. In some embodiments, a number of skipped frames between the first segment pair and the second segment pair is determined by calculating a segment offset between the two segment pairs and subtracting the segment offset value from the sum of the number of freeze frames associated with the first segment pair and all temporally intervening segment pairs between the first segment pair and the second segment pair.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 5, 2009
    Date of Patent: May 22, 2012
    Assignee: Tektronix, Inc.
    Inventor: Kevin M. Ferguson
  • Patent number: 8023770
    Abstract: Aspects of the present invention are related to systems and methods for determining the orientation of an electronic document image.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 23, 2008
    Date of Patent: September 20, 2011
    Assignee: Sharp Laboratories of America, Inc.
    Inventors: Ahmet Mufit Ferman, Richard John Campbell
  • Patent number: 8023741
    Abstract: Aspects of the present invention are related to systems and methods for determining the location of numerals in an electronic document image.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 23, 2008
    Date of Patent: September 20, 2011
    Assignee: Sharp Laboratories of America, Inc.
    Inventors: Ahmet Mufit Ferman, Richard John Campbell
  • Patent number: 8023569
    Abstract: Embodiments of the present invention comprise methods and systems for block-based residual upsampling. Some embodiments of the present invention comprise methods and systems for residual upsampling for spatially scalable video coding.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 28, 2006
    Date of Patent: September 20, 2011
    Assignee: Sharp Laboratories of America, Inc.
    Inventor: Shijun Sun
  • Patent number: 8014596
    Abstract: Aspects of the present invention are related to methods and systems for determining a background color in a digital image. A background color value for a pixel in an image may be determined by summarizing the color values in a color buffer, wherein the color values in the buffer may have been selectively added to the color buffer, from the image data, based on one, or more, criteria which may be related to edge density, image uniformity, non-local color information, a foreground color estimate and other selection criterion. The background color for the pixel maybe determined in a forward scan and updated during a backward scan.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 31, 2007
    Date of Patent: September 6, 2011
    Assignee: Sharp Laboratories of America, Inc.
    Inventors: Richard J. Campbell, Jon M. Speigle
  • Patent number: 8001236
    Abstract: Aspects of the present invention relate to systems and methods for remote monitoring and control of a content-consumption device.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 13, 2008
    Date of Patent: August 16, 2011
    Assignee: Sharp Laboratories of America, Inc.
    Inventors: Vishnu-Kumar Shivaji-Rao, David C. Barton
  • Patent number: 8000390
    Abstract: Embodiments of the present invention comprise methods and systems for efficient prediction-mode selection.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 28, 2006
    Date of Patent: August 16, 2011
    Assignee: Sharp Laboratories of America, Inc.
    Inventors: Jie Zhao, Shawmin Lei
  • Patent number: 8000535
    Abstract: Aspects of the present invention relate to systems and methods for refining text segmentation results. Non-text, line elements in a text map may be detected and removed from the text map. Pixels associated with vertical and/or horizontal lines may be identified in the text map based on a background-color constraint, a directional color constraint and a continuity constraint. Run counters and run-reset counters associated with a direction may be used to identify pixels meeting the continuity constraint.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 18, 2007
    Date of Patent: August 16, 2011
    Assignee: Sharp Laboratories of America, Inc.
    Inventor: Jon M. Speigle
  • Patent number: 7991019
    Abstract: With the growing number of, both personal and shared, devices that may be connected to the Internet, the number of possible media sources that may provide input for a message increases, as does the complexity of message preparation. Additionally, with the introduction of shared devices, such as televisions, as media sources for messages, both authentication and security issues are of fundamental importance. Aspects the present invention are related to systems and methods for combining media inputs at an external, central server for messaging.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 19, 2006
    Date of Patent: August 2, 2011
    Assignee: Sharp Laboratories of America, Inc.
    Inventor: Renjit Tom Thomas
  • Patent number: 7978618
    Abstract: Embodiments of the present invention comprise systems and methods for user interface customization.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 21, 2006
    Date of Patent: July 12, 2011
    Assignee: Sharp Laboratories of America, Inc.
    Inventors: Tanna Marie Richardson, Ginger Marie Finnegan
  • Patent number: 7889932
    Abstract: Embodiments of the present invention comprise systems, methods and devices for detection of image regions of various content types using a masking condition and an entropy measure.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 2, 2006
    Date of Patent: February 15, 2011
    Assignee: Sharp Laboratories of America, Inc.
    Inventor: Richard John Campbell
  • Patent number: 7876959
    Abstract: Aspects of the present invention relate to systems, methods and devices for detection of text in an image using an initial text classification result and a verification process. In particular, a support region of a candidate text pixel in a text-candidate map may be expanded to produce a revised text-candidate map. Pictorial regions in the image may be discriminated based on an entropy measure using masking and the revised text-candidate map, and the revised text-candidate map may be refined based on the pictorial regions.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 6, 2006
    Date of Patent: January 25, 2011
    Assignee: Sharp Laboratories of America, Inc.
    Inventors: Toyohisa Matsuda, Richard John Campbell, Lawrence Shao-hsien Chen
  • Patent number: 7864365
    Abstract: Aspects of the present invention relate to methods and systems for segmenting a digital image into regions. A frequency-of-occurrence of image values may be determined excluding a portion of pixels in a digital image. An image value associated with a peak in the frequency-of-occurrence of image values may be identified and associated with an image label. Pixel locations may be labeled based on the associated labels and image values. Additionally, unreliable pixels may be determined and labeled based on the associated labels and image values.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 15, 2006
    Date of Patent: January 4, 2011
    Assignee: Sharp Laboratories of America, Inc.
    Inventors: Richard John Campbell, Toyohisa Matsuda, Lawrence Shao-hsien Chen
  • Patent number: 7856142
    Abstract: Embodiments of the present invention comprise systems and methods for detecting glyph pixels in a rasterized image.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 26, 2007
    Date of Patent: December 21, 2010
    Assignee: Sharp Laboratories of America, Inc.
    Inventors: Ahmet Mufit Ferman, Richard John Campbell, Jon M. Speigle
  • Patent number: 7792359
    Abstract: Embodiments of the present invention comprise systems, methods and devices for detection of image regions using a masking condition and an entropy measure.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 15, 2006
    Date of Patent: September 7, 2010
    Assignee: Sharp Laboratories of America, Inc.
    Inventors: Toyohisa Matsuda, Richard John Campbell
  • Patent number: 7595911
    Abstract: Embodiments of the present invention comprise methods and systems for descreening a digital image.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 7, 2006
    Date of Patent: September 29, 2009
    Assignee: Sharp Laboratories of America, Inc.
    Inventor: John E. Dolan