Patents Examined by Anthony Mackowey
  • Patent number: 7292716
    Abstract: A medical simulation apparatus is provided, which is capable of performing a simulation by correlating a three-dimensional image with an entity model. Coordinates of measurement marks MP1, MP2, MP3 on a surface of a lower dental arch model 62 in a coordinate system defined by three reference marks MK1, MK2, MK3 are acquired before and after displacement of the lower dental arch model 62. The coordinates thus acquired are converted into coordinates in a coordinate system defined by reference marks PK1, PK2, PK3 on the basis of a relationship between the reference marks MK1, MK2, MK3 and the reference marks PK1, PK2, PK3. Then, changes in the coordinates after displacement of the lower dental arch model 62 are determined, and a region preliminarily specified in a three-dimensional image displayed on a display 5 is displaced on the basis of the coordinate changes thus determined.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 31, 2002
    Date of Patent: November 6, 2007
    Assignee: Imagnosis Inc.
    Inventor: Han-Joon Kim
  • Patent number: 7286706
    Abstract: The present invention concerns a device for detecting and representing movements. The device includes a position sensor for detecting the current position of a reference point of the device, a data processor for processing the position data detected by the position sensor and a projector for projecting on a surface an image projection of the detected and processed position data. The data processor takes into account a modification in the current position of the reference point such that the projection image on the surface remains substantially stable concerning location and position.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 2, 2002
    Date of Patent: October 23, 2007
    Assignee: Siemens Aktiengesellschaft
    Inventors: Frank Blaimberger, Alexander Jarczyk, Matthias Schneider-Hufschmidt
  • Patent number: 7280669
    Abstract: The present invention relates to a digital image watermarking apparatus and method. Luminance component of a digital image are transformed into coefficients of a frequency domain, and watermark is generated by encrypting a user key and generating pseudo random number from encrypted user key. Then, a replacement coefficient generated from a coefficient of a first frequency area and the watermark is replaced with a coefficient of a second frequency area so that the watermark is embedded into the digital image. The embedded watermark is extracted at an authenticating apparatus and the digital image is authenticated by finding the correlation between the extracted watermark and watermark for authentication.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 10, 2001
    Date of Patent: October 9, 2007
    Assignee: Markany, Inc.
    Inventors: Jong-Uk Choi, Jung-Su Lee
  • Patent number: 7277559
    Abstract: A mobile apparatus is provided, which includes a plurality of imaging devices, a measurement device for measuring a current position and direction of the imaging devices, a map data storing section which stores map data including at least registered information on positions of stationary objects, a recognized distance calculating section which obtains a parallax for a plurality of images, a reference distance calculating section which calculates a reference distance from the imaging devices to a front border of each stationary object, a retracting section for determining a range of image processing, which selects a set of pixels to be processed so as to generate a retracted image, a detecting section for detecting objects from the retracted image, a transport device, and a transport controller for controlling movement of the transport device according to information about the objects detected by the detecting section.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 7, 2003
    Date of Patent: October 2, 2007
    Assignee: Honda Motor Co., Ltd.
    Inventors: Shinichi Matsunaga, Nobuo Higaki
  • Patent number: 7272244
    Abstract: The invention relates to a method for the production of images with high resolution jacquard fabric comprising the following steps: colour scanning of an output image to be reproduced on a fabric, video visualisation of said image with the largest number of colours possible with the means employed for said visualisation. The invention is characterised in that the method comprises further steps: selection of a number of base colours to be used for forming said image on said fabric, said number of base colours is related to the number of warp and weft threads which may be used in the loom and which are to be applied in the weaving of said fabric, reducing the original colours of the output image to a number of reduced colours which it is possible to produce by mixing the base colours of the warp and weft threads.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 19, 2001
    Date of Patent: September 18, 2007
    Assignee: Brevitex Etablissement pour l'Exploitation de Brevets Textiles
    Inventors: Alessandro Saporiti, Giovanni Saporiti
  • Patent number: 7269274
    Abstract: An apparatus for embedding a digital watermark in a document image detects circumscribing outer shapes of characters in the document image and sets a plurality of reference lines that extend in the column direction and are spaced apart in the row direction by a basic pitch. The outer shapes include a first outer shape, a second outer shape that neighbors the first outer shape, and a third outer shape that neighbors the second outer shape, and the reference lines include a first reference line located between the first outer shape and the second outer shape, and a second reference line located between the second outer shape and the third outer shape. Control is performed for at least one of the second and third outer shapes so that a distance between the first reference line and an edge of the second outer shape is different from a distance between the second reference line and an edge of the third outer shape, in accordance with digital watermark information to be embedded.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 5, 2003
    Date of Patent: September 11, 2007
    Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Keiichi Iwamura, Kitahiro Kaneda, Jun Tamaru, Takami Eguchi
  • Patent number: 7266219
    Abstract: For supporting a complicated driving operation, a synthesized image is presented to the driver. The driver can view this image and thus drive with a sense of security. The synthesized image may include an image of at least one tire and may have an enlargement/reduction ratio that is relatively higher in a nearby area of the vehicle, including a grounding portion of at least one tire of the vehicle, as compared with a peripheral area of the vehicle.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 19, 2001
    Date of Patent: September 4, 2007
    Assignee: Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.
    Inventors: Shusaku Okamoto, Masamichi Nakagawa, Kunio Nobori, Atsushi Morimura, Nobuhiko Yasui, Akira Ishida, Atsushi Iisaka, Takashi Yoshida
  • Patent number: 7266221
    Abstract: An image size changing section obtains a size-changed image by changing the size of one of two original images captured by a pair of cameras. If an edge of an object has many oblique components, the edge is difficult to detect as a vertical edge but, when the image is horizontally reduced, an oblique edge becomes close to a vertical edge. For this reason, a feature end points are extracted with reliability by a feature extracting section and, thereby, an object is recognized and the distance to the object is determined reliably.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 24, 2002
    Date of Patent: September 4, 2007
    Assignee: Fujitsu Ten Limited
    Inventors: Nobukazu Shima, Akihiro Oota, Kenji Oka
  • Patent number: 7260238
    Abstract: Distance d1 between the right edges of A1 and B2, and distance d2 between the right edges of A3 and B4 are calculated. If data to be embedded is 1, one or a combination of a process for increasing the size of B2 in the column direction or decreasing the size of B4 in the column and a process for moving the position of B2 toward B3 or moving the position of B4 toward B3 is executed to meet d1>d2. If data to be embedded is 0, one or a combination of a process for decreasing the size of B2 in the column direction or increasing the size of B4 in the column direction, and a process for moving the position of B2 toward B1 or moving the position of B4 toward B5 is executed to meet d1<d2.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 5, 2003
    Date of Patent: August 21, 2007
    Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Keiichi Iwamura, Kitahiro Kaneda, Jun Tamaru, Takami Eguchi
  • Patent number: 7257245
    Abstract: When position matching is performed on two images in which the soft tissue structures and the bone tissue structures are displaced in different directions, artifacts appearing in the subtraction image are reduced, and it becomes possible to perform the position matching according to the diagnostic objective or the preferences of the operator. A global position matching means that globally matches the positions of the entirety of two inputted images that have been obtained of the same subject, and a local position matching means that locally matches the positions of the two images that have been globally matched by the global position matching means are provided. The global position matching means has a function for performing a bone tissue structure global position matching process and a function for performing a non-bone tissue structure global position matching process. One of these two functions is selected and the global position matching is performed.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 16, 2002
    Date of Patent: August 14, 2007
    Assignee: Fujifilm Corporation
    Inventor: Akira Oosawa
  • Patent number: 7245740
    Abstract: To provide an electronic watermark embedding device for improving accuracy when classified information is being detected. The watermark image forming section 1006 creates a watermark image based on classified information 1004 with reference to the document image. For the document image, embedding regions for embedding a dot pattern which is identifiable as a prescribed symbol by a prescribed filter are detected, and a determination is made as to whether or not the proportion of the text region to the embedding region is less than or equal to a prescribed threshold value, and if the proportion of the text region is less than or equal to the prescribed threshold value, a prescribed number of dot patterns in which a symbol formed of at least a portion of the classified information is identifiable (symbol unit) is embedded in a region where the embedding region and the text region do not overlap.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 1, 2003
    Date of Patent: July 17, 2007
    Assignee: Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd.
    Inventor: Masahiko Suzaki
  • Patent number: 7245747
    Abstract: Whether medical image data is provided with photographing information representing the object part and/or the direction of taking the image is judged, and the object part and/or the direction of taking the image of the medical image data is recognized on the basis of the medical image data when the image data is not provided with photographing information. The medical image data is attached with the result of the recognition as the photographing information.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 18, 2002
    Date of Patent: July 17, 2007
    Assignee: Fujifilm Corporation
    Inventor: Akira Oosawa
  • Patent number: 7242791
    Abstract: A method and system for guiding a-vehicle comprises a location module for collecting location data for the vehicle. A vision module collects vision data for the vehicle. A maximum allowable correction duration and a maximum allowable vision-derived displacement are established for correction of a position of a vehicle. A location quality estimator estimates location quality data for the corresponding collected location data during an evaluation time window. A vision module estimates vision quality data for the corresponding collected vision data during the evaluation time window. A selector selects the application of location data or vision data based on the quality data and at least one of the maximum allowable correction duration and the maximum allowable vision-derived displacement for the evaluation time window or for an application interval trailing the evaluation time window.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 15, 2005
    Date of Patent: July 10, 2007
    Assignee: Deere & Company
    Inventors: Shufeng Han, John Franklin Reid, Terence Daniel Pickett
  • Patent number: 7239717
    Abstract: Current methods of embedding hidden data in an image inevitably distort the original image by noise. This distortion cannot generally be removed completely because of quantization, bit-replacement, or truncation at the grayscales 0 and 255. The distortion, though often small, may make the original image unacceptable for medical applications, or for military and law enforcement applications where an image must be inspected under unusual viewing conditions (e.g., after filtering or extreme zoom). The present invention provides high-capacity embedding of data that is lossless (or distortion-free) because, after embedded information is extracted from a cover image, we revert to an exact copy of the original image before the embedding took place. This new technique is a powerful tool for a variety of tasks, including lossless robust watermarking, lossless authentication with fragile watermarks, and steganalysis. The technique is applicable to raw, uncompressed formats (e.g., BMP, PCX, PGM, RAS, etc.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 2, 2005
    Date of Patent: July 3, 2007
    Assignee: The Research Foundation of SUNY
    Inventors: Jessica Fridrich, Miroslav Goljan, Rui Du
  • Patent number: 7239724
    Abstract: An identification system (10) of the present invention is used at airport terminals, bus stations, government buildings, and the like. The identification system (10) includes a controller (26), a pair of spaced stations or checkpoints (12, 14) for generating a first reference and a second reference each containing scanning image and weight of the person (P) passing through the first (12) and second (14) spaced stations. The controller (26) includes a comparative software that determines a correlation between the first and second references to identify at least one discrepancy therebetween. As the discrepancy is identified, a distress signal is send by the controller (26) to the second station (14) to alert about the discrepancy being identified. The invention includes a method of identifying the person (P).
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 31, 2006
    Date of Patent: July 3, 2007
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventor: Joseph Sznba
  • Patent number: 7231061
    Abstract: The disclosure describes methods for adaptive prediction filtering for digital watermarking applications. The predictive filter is designed to predict the digital watermark signal. In one implementation, there are two stages of prediction filtering. A first stage operates on a suspect signal before detecting any watermark in that signal. This stage adapts the predictive filter to local signal characteristics. A second stage uses known watermark signal elements to adapt a non-linear filter used in extracting message symbols from the suspect signal. This stage produces detection statistics based on a comparison of expected and measured message symbol values, and uses these statistics to adapt the parameters of a predictive filter. This adapted prediction filter is then applied to extract message symbol estimates.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 21, 2003
    Date of Patent: June 12, 2007
    Assignee: Digimarc Corporation
    Inventor: Brett A. Bradley
  • Patent number: 7231076
    Abstract: A method and system is presented for automatically selecting a region of interest (ROI) within an image of an object, for example when performing non-rigid image registration between the image and another image of the object. In this way, the need for user interaction can be minimized or eliminated during image registration. The ROI is determined by defining an entropy measure H of the image, and selecting the region within the image in which the entropy measure is maximized, In this way, the ROI is optimized to contain as much information as possible. In one embodiment, the entropy measure H is a modified Shannon entropy, defined by H=??I P(I) log P(I), where I is the value of the image intensity level, and P(I) is the probability of an image intensity value I occurring within the ROI.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 30, 2004
    Date of Patent: June 12, 2007
    Assignee: Accuray, Inc.
    Inventors: Dongshan Fu, Gopinath Kuduvalli
  • Patent number: 7215792
    Abstract: Methods and apparatus for spectrally-encoding plural source images and for providing the spectrally-encoded plural source images in a composite image, for rendering the composite image in a physical form, or for recovering at least one of the encoded source images from the rendered composite image such that the recovered source image is made distinguishable. Source image confusion in a rendered composite image is controlled by application of a multi-illuminant gray component replacement (GCR) technique to the darkness common to the different colorants under the multiple illuminants.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 9, 2002
    Date of Patent: May 8, 2007
    Assignee: Xerox Corporation
    Inventors: Gaurav Sharma, Yeqing (Juliet) Zhang, Robert P. Loce, Steven J. Harrington
  • Patent number: 7209580
    Abstract: The invention relates to a computed tomography method for forming images of an object to be examined which is arranged in an examination zone. The examination zone is scanned by means of a conical X-ray beam. In order to enable images having a high image quality to be formed from a selected imaging zone while making an as small as possible computational effort, the invention proposes the following steps: a) selecting an imaging zone of the object to be examined, b) determining the sub-regions of the X-ray detector on which the imaging zone of the object to be examined is projected during the acquisition of the projection data, c) forming sub-projection data by selecting the projection data associated with the sub-regions from the acquired projection data, and d) reconstructing the desired image from the sub-projection data by backprojection.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 8, 2002
    Date of Patent: April 24, 2007
    Assignee: Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V.
    Inventors: Michael Grass, Thomas Koehler, Roland Proksa
  • Patent number: 7206430
    Abstract: A watermarking system comprises an encoding data processor operable to generate at least one marked version of an original item of material by introducing one of a predetermined set of code words into a copy of the original material item. The code words are generated from a pseudo-random number generator initialised with a seed value. The seed value is used to identify the marked material item, from the code word produced from the seed value. The watermarking system also includes a detecting data processor operable to identify a particular marked copy of the material item by recovering a code word from the marked material item and correlating all code words in the set of code words with the recovered code word. The detecting data processing apparatus also includes a registration processor operable to associate samples of the original material item with corresponding samples of the marked material item to which corresponding code word coefficients may have been added.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 12, 2002
    Date of Patent: April 17, 2007
    Assignee: Sony United Kingdom Limited
    Inventors: Jason Charles Pelly, Daniel Warren Tapson