Patents Examined by Brian Q Le
  • Patent number: 8094888
    Abstract: An image processor, includes: an image pickup part configured to pick up a pickup image of a certain area; an irradiator configured to irradiate at least a part of the certain area for the pickup image picked up by the image pickup part; an extractor configured to extract, as an irradiation image, a light irradiated from the irradiator, the irradiation image being extracted from the pickup image picked up by the image pickup part; an image generating part configured to generate an irradiation removed image which is obtained by removing the irradiation image from the pickup image; an object recognizer configured to recognize an object in the certain area, based on the irradiation removed image generated by the image generating part; and a distance sensor configured to sense a distance to the object sensed by the object recognizer.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 8, 2007
    Date of Patent: January 10, 2012
    Assignee: Nissan Motor Co., Ltd.
    Inventors: Hiroshi Satoh, Shogo Kitano
  • Patent number: 8090213
    Abstract: An image processing device includes: a peaking filter for performing peaking processing on an input image signal to generate a peaking image signal; a selection circuit, coupled to the peaking filter, for selecting a plurality of pixels within the peaking image signal; and a median filter, coupled to the selection circuit, for filtering the plurality of pixels within the peaking image signal to generate a filtered image signal.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 8, 2007
    Date of Patent: January 3, 2012
    Assignee: Realtek Semiconductor Corp.
    Inventors: Yen-Hsing Wu, Chun-Hsing Hsieh, Chi-Feng Wang
  • Patent number: 8090157
    Abstract: A system for finding and providing images of eyes acceptable for review, recordation, analysis, segmentation, mapping, normalization, feature extraction, encoding, storage, enrollment, indexing, matching, and/or the like. The system may acquire images of the candidates run them through a contrast filter. The images may be ranked and a number of candidates may be extracted for a list from where a candidate may be selected. Metrics of the eyes may be measured and their profiles evaluated. Also, the spacing between a pair of eyes may be evaluated to confirm the pair's validity. Eye images that do not measure up to certain standards may be discarded and new ones may be selected.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 7, 2007
    Date of Patent: January 3, 2012
    Assignee: Honeywell International Inc.
    Inventors: Rida M. Hamza, Terry Ahrens
  • Patent number: 8081822
    Abstract: Embodiments of the present invention include a method for processing captured image information in an interactive video display system. The method includes accessing a region of a vision image. The method further includes comparing the region of the vision image to a first orientation of a value image. The value image comprises a plurality of weighted values representing a feature to be detected. The method further includes comparing the region of the vision image to a second orientation of the value image. The method further includes determining which orientation of the value image best matches the feature to be detected to an object of the region of the vision image.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 31, 2005
    Date of Patent: December 20, 2011
    Assignee: Intellectual Ventures Holding 67 LLC
    Inventor: Matthew T. Bell
  • Patent number: 8077970
    Abstract: An operation estimating apparatus includes an image obtaining unit, a human body feature point specifying unit, and an operation estimating unit. The image obtaining unit repeatedly obtains images. The human body feature point specifying unit specifies a predetermined human body feature point of an operator in each of the images. The operation estimating unit estimates one of operations based on the human body feature points. The operation estimating unit compares an actual posture locus of the operator with a transitional estimation model for each of the operations by the operator to obtain a degree of approximation of the transitional estimation model to the actual posture locus. The operation estimating unit estimates that the operator is going to perform the one of the operations that corresponds to an estimated posture locus of the transitional estimation model having the degree of approximation that satisfies a predetermined threshold.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 4, 2007
    Date of Patent: December 13, 2011
    Assignee: DENSO CORPORATION
    Inventor: Takahiro Ishikawa
  • Patent number: 8077906
    Abstract: A system and method for supporting augmented reality in an ocean scene is provided. According to the system and method, camera rotation information is extracted from horizontal line information of a sea extracted from an original image including a focal length and at least two first natural feature point tracking data existing on a sea plane and a plane parallel to the sea plane, using long-distance background features; camera movement is sequentially calculated from the camera rotation information and at least two natural feature point tracking data existing on the sea plane of the original image; and a computer graphics object is placed on a ground plane by importing camera position data, and a rendering is performed as moving the camera.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 2, 2007
    Date of Patent: December 13, 2011
    Assignee: Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute
    Inventors: Jung Jae Yu, Chang Joon Park, Jae Heon Kim, In Ho Lee
  • Patent number: 8077976
    Abstract: Of the feature amounts of respective regions on an image, a region having a feature amount which is similar to that of a region of interest on a image is specified (S1307). Of the OCR results of the respective regions on the image, a region having an OCR result which matches that of the region of interest on the image is specified (S1308). Regions corresponding to respective regions on the image of the respective regions are specified based on the layout order of the specified regions (S1311). Of the regions obtained by combining neighboring regions on the image, a region corresponding to an inclusion region that includes each specified region is specified (S1314).
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 13, 2006
    Date of Patent: December 13, 2011
    Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventor: Hirotaka Shiiyama
  • Patent number: 8073245
    Abstract: A card identifying apparatus according to one embodiment of the invention has a light-receiving portion that reads a card on a pixel basis of a predetermined area as a unit including color information having brightness, RAM that stores image data comprised of a plurality of pixels read by the light-receiving portion, a pixel data increasing/decreasing processing section that increases/decreases the number of pixels of the image data, and card identifying means for identifying authentication of the card based on the image data increased/decreased by the pixel data increasing/decreasing processing section.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 28, 2007
    Date of Patent: December 6, 2011
    Assignee: Universal Entertainment Corporation
    Inventor: Takao Nireki
  • Patent number: 8064735
    Abstract: An image data recording and reproducing system comprises an image data input unit, an ID generator generating an ID inserted to image data from the image data input unit, a plurality of image data recorders for recording the image data, and an output unit for outputting the image data recorded into the plurality of image data recorders, wherein each of the plurality of image data recorders has an ID table and an image data storage area, and an ID of the ID table is matched with image data of the image data storage area on the bases of recording position information of the image data.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 23, 2008
    Date of Patent: November 22, 2011
    Assignee: Hitachi Kokusai Electric Co., Ltd.
    Inventors: Shigeki Nagaya, Seiichi Hirai, Hirotada Ueda
  • Patent number: 8064652
    Abstract: An image processing apparatus configured to print a sheet to instruct outputting an image includes an analysis unit configured to analyze an image stored in an image storage unit, a conversion unit configured to convert a size of the image according to a result of the analysis performed by the analysis unit, and a printing unit configured to print the image converted by the conversion unit onto the sheet.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 4, 2007
    Date of Patent: November 22, 2011
    Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventor: Takeshi Nakamura
  • Patent number: 8059893
    Abstract: A method and electronics circuit for processing very high resolution images or very high frame rate images in real time. Each pixel within a frame of pixels is compared to the neighboring pixels within the frame to determine if the pixel is part of a blob group. If the pixel is part of the blob group, the characteristics of the pixel are added to the statistics for the blob group. When a pixel overlaps two target blob groups, the two blob groups are combined to form one blob group. When the end of the frame is reached information about the blob groups in the frame is made available.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 25, 2007
    Date of Patent: November 15, 2011
    Assignee: The United States of America as represented by the Secretary of the Navy
    Inventor: Ronald Norman Prusia
  • Patent number: 8055091
    Abstract: A method and apparatus, particularly suited to SIMD instruction sets, to filter streaming video information encoded under a predictive encoding algorithm specified under video encoding standards, such as MPEG 4 or H.264/AVC. The filtering operation de-blocks or removes unwanted borders in the perceived video. During the filtering process, a series of filtering mask is generated based on temporal and spatial statistics of predictive encoded video information, which is then recursively applied to the video in order to gate filtered or unfiltered video to an output channel according to coefficients of the masks. The filtering mask effectively yields a decision or rule-based map that transforms the video on a pixel-by-pixel basis thereby avoiding complex and processor-intensive decision tree logic customarily required to process individual pixels of successive macroblocks that may have different filtering requirements.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 25, 2008
    Date of Patent: November 8, 2011
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: Krishna C. Ratakonda, Cesar A. Gonzales, Thomas A. Horvath, Thomas McCarthy
  • Patent number: 8055072
    Abstract: The invention provides image display panels. The image display panel comprises a histogram generator, a tone slope generator, and an image transformer. The histogram generator receives an original image, counts the pixels of different gray levels to generate a histogram distribution of the original image, and compares the pixel counts at every gray level with a first threshold count to identify the peaks of the histogram distribution. The tone slope generator generates a tone slope based on the histogram distribution and peaks of the histogram distribution. The image transformer transforms the original image into a modified image based on the tone slope.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 27, 2007
    Date of Patent: November 8, 2011
    Assignee: Himax Technologies Limited
    Inventors: Shing-Chia Chen, Ling-Hsiu Huang
  • Patent number: 8055028
    Abstract: An object pose normalization method and apparatus and an object recognition method are provided. The object pose normalization method includes: determining a pose of a non-frontal image of an object; performing smoothing transformation on the non-frontal image of the object, thereby generating a smoothed object image; and synthesizing a frontal image of the object by using the pose determination result and the smoothed object image. According to the method and apparatus, a front object image can be synthesized by using a non-frontal object image without causing an image distortion problem due to self-occlusion and non-rigid deformation.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 13, 2007
    Date of Patent: November 8, 2011
    Assignee: Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
    Inventors: Gyu-tae Park, Haitao Wang, Young-su Moon
  • Patent number: 8055097
    Abstract: An image pick-up apparatus is disclosed which allows a reduction in degradation of images associated with a changed image magnification due to movements in a focus direction during image pick-up operation. The image pick-up apparatus has an image pick-up controller which performs a plurality of image pick-up operations for producing a single image and performs focus adjustment operation before each of the image pick-up operations to produce a first plurality of images, and an information producer which produces information on an image magnification of each of the first plurality of images. The image-pickup apparatus also has an image producer which produces a second plurality of images based on the first plurality of images and the information on the image magnification, and an image combiner which combines the second plurality of images to produce a single image.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 28, 2006
    Date of Patent: November 8, 2011
    Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Katsuhiro Inoue, Masanori Ishikawa, Jun Sugita, Mitsuru Shinohara, Yuki Nagao
  • Patent number: 8055076
    Abstract: A tag information production apparatus is disclosed which can apply tag information to a main image through a realistic amount of work. A time information acquisition section acquires time information of a main image selected on a working screen, and a key region setting section sets a key region at a position corresponding to a partial region in the main image specified arbitrarily by an operator. An identification information application section applies, to the set key region, region identification information which allows identification between the key region and a peripheral region. A key image production section produces a key image to which time information same as the time information of the main image is applied and in which the region identification information is applied to the key region set through the working screen.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 5, 2006
    Date of Patent: November 8, 2011
    Assignee: Sony Corporation
    Inventors: Hiroaki Kikuchi, Hideyuki Imaida
  • Patent number: 8050463
    Abstract: An iris recognition system implementing image quality metrics to assess the quality of an acquired eye image for reliable operation. Images with low image quality may be rejected or flagged based upon the application. The image quality may be determined with a preprocessing module in the recognition system. The processing may be configured based on a quality assessment.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 2, 2007
    Date of Patent: November 1, 2011
    Assignee: Honeywell International Inc.
    Inventor: Rida M. Hamza
  • Patent number: 8050453
    Abstract: A method for tracking objects includes identifying a target, identifying a plurality of auxiliary objects related to the target, and tracking the target using the plurality of auxiliary objects.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 15, 2006
    Date of Patent: November 1, 2011
    Assignees: OMRON Corporation, Northwestern University
    Inventors: Ming Yang, Ying Wu, Shengyang Dai, Shihong Lao
  • Patent number: 8050521
    Abstract: The present invention provides a true-scale, coordinate-matched, linked in real-time, dual three-dimensional/two-dimensional visual display/viewer. The display simultaneously shows a 3D digital image and an associated 2D digital image of a selected drawing. The display of the present invention allows a user to visualize an asset's location, surrounding environment and hazards and true scale structural details for interior or external structural scenes. Using the display and associated tools, the user can obtain real-time information of an environment, true-scale measurement, plan ingress/egress paths, shortest paths between points and the number of doorways in a structure and track objects within the displayed environment. The intelligence gained using the tools and 3D/2D display may be used and further manipulated by a single user or may be distributed to other users.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 2, 2009
    Date of Patent: November 1, 2011
    Assignee: Archaio, LLC
    Inventor: David N. Judelson
  • Patent number: 8050473
    Abstract: An improved method of segmenting medical images includes aspects of live wire and active shape models to determine the most likely segmentation given a shape distribution that satisfies boundary location constrains on an item of interest. The method includes a supervised learning portion to train and learn new types of shape instances and a segmentation portion to use the learned model to segment new target images containing instances of the shape. The segmentation portion includes an automated search for an appropriate shape and deformation of the shape to establish a best oriented boundary for the object of interest on a medical image.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 13, 2008
    Date of Patent: November 1, 2011
    Assignee: The Trustees Of The University Of Pennsylvania
    Inventors: Jayaram K. Udupa, Jaimin Liu