Abstract: An image sensing apparatus in which an AD converter has a quantization bit count that can be modified, thereby reducing the power consumption of a digital signal processing circuit. The processing bit count of the digital signal processing circuit is made identical to the modified AD bit count. This provides improved image quality and reduced power consumption in the entire system.

Abstract: A ruled line extracting apparatus obtains circumscribed rectangles of pixel concatenation regions included in an input pattern, and calculates the most frequent value of their heights. Additionally, the apparatus integrates segments by ignoring a wild card segment, and calculates the most frequent value of height/width of extracted straight lines and segments structuring the straight line. Next, it performs a process for integrating/deleting straight lines using each threshold value based on the highest frequency value. Then, it checks/deletes a straight line according to a distribution of black pixels around the straight line, and recognizes the remaining straight lines as ruled line candidates.

Abstract: A technique wherein the number and position of a quantization parameter node is determined in response to the quantization parameters and a preselected error. The size of scene graph and the corresponding amount of memory required to store the scene graph can be reduced by selective placement of quantization parameter nodes in a scene graph. The scene graph is traversed depth first to establish an order and then traversed in reverse. At each node, a calculation relating to (1) the relative cost of inserting a quantization parameter node and (2) the relative savings that result from insertion of a quantization node is performed. Quantization parameter nodes are selectively placed in response to a result of these calculations. The maximum degree of acceptable error value is chosen for each quantization type. This error value limits the number of quantization parameter nodes that can be placed in a scene graph.

Abstract: The invention relates to an encoding method for the compression of a video sequence by means of a tridimensional wavelet transform. This method is based on a hierarchical subband encoding process leading to transform coefficients constituting a hierarchical pyramid. A spatio-temporal orientation tree, in which the roots are formed with the pixels of the approximation subband and the offspring of each of these pixels is formed with the pixels of the higher subbands, defines the spatio-temporal relationship inside said pyramid. According to the invention, the initial subband structure of the wavelet transform is preserved, in the encoding process, by scanning the subbands one after the other in an order that respects the parent-offspring dependencies formed in the tree.

Abstract: A noise reduction apparatus in accordance with the present invention is configured to reduce mosquito noise while retaining edges by calculating the maximum value Y of the difference values of adjacent pixels in an area of M×N around a notice pixel by using a difference value calculator and a maximum value calculator, by controlling a pixel replacement device depending on Y and the difference value X from the notice pixel in the area of J×K narrower than the area of M×N, and by carrying out more intense smoothing depending on the magnitude of X with respect to Y, that is, when X is smaller than Y.

Abstract: An apparatus and a concomitant method for detecting and recognizing text information in a captured imagery. The present method transforms the image of the text to a normalized coordinate system before performing OCR, thereby yielding more robust recognition performance. The present invention also combines OCR results from multiple frames, in a manner that takes the best recognition results from each frame and forms a single result that can be more accurate than the results from any of the individual frames.

Abstract: Image conversion to one-half of a number of pixels is carried out repeatedly to allow formation of an intermediate image having pixels of a number close to a set number of pixels. The intermediate image is further subjected to image conversion to thereby obtain image data of the set number of pixels.

Abstract: A method for determining skew angle (5) and location of a document in an over-scanned digital image is disclosed. A document is scanned to capture a gray scale image. The outline pixel (1) of a document from the captured gray scale image are connected (2). An initial angle is set at zero and a x-minimum, y-minimum, x-maximum, and y-maximum of the polygon are determined (3). A rectangular boundary (4) area based on the x-minimum, y-minimum, x-maximum, and y-maximum is calculated and recorded. The angle is recorded and the polygon is rotated z-degree. The process is repeated and a minimum boundary area is selected. An angle corresponding to the minimum boundary is the skew angle of the document.

Abstract: A computer system comprises an image capture device (10) for capturing an image of a paper document (such as a newspaper article or advertisement) to produce captured image information, and keys or the like for enabling a user to select one of a plurality of options (such as “view” or “order”) in relation to that capture information. The system also includes a document database (36) storing image information relating to the contents of a plurality of documents and, for each document, information relating to action which can be taken in relation to that document, and a processor system (30,36) for matching the captured image information with the stored image information for at least one of the documents and determining the respective action information, and for processing the determined action information and the user-selected option to produce a computer instruction as to action to be taken (such as load the newspaper article into the PC's web browser, or “electronically” order the product).

Abstract: A method of registration of a functional emission image to another image, e.g. a structural/anatomical image, is disclosed in which the emission image is first processed to mask out regions of the background and lungs identified in a corresponding transmission image. Only areas which are not masked out in the emission image are matched to areas in the x-ray image. The x-ray image and masked emission image may then be displayed in superposition.

Abstract: The present invention provides a high-precision alignment method, device and code for inspections that compare an inspection image with a reference image and detect defects from their differences. In one embodiment an inspection image and a reference image are divided into multiple regions. An offset is calculated for each pair of regions. Out of these multiple offsets, only the offsets with high reliability are used to determine an offset for the entire image. This allows high-precision alignment with little or no dependency on pattern density or shape, differences in luminance between images, and uneven luminance within individual images. Also, detection sensitivity is adjusted as necessary by monitoring alignment precision.

Abstract: A method and associated device wherein an inverse histogram based pixel mapping step is combined with an edge enhancement step such as unsharp masking. In such an arrangement the inverse histogram based pixel mapping step improves the performance of the unsharp masking step, serving to minimize the enhancement of noise components while desired signal components are sharpened.

Abstract: The invention proposes a method of and a device for coding a signal (S) to obtain a scalable bit-stream (O). The signal (S) comprises blocks of values. Each block is represented (20) as a sequence of bit planes and the values are scanned and transmitted (21, 23) in an order of decreasing bit plane significance. For each bit plane the scanning and transmitting (21,23) are performed in a rectangular scan zone (RMAX/CMAX) starting from a corner of the block (usually an upper-left corner). Preferably, the scanning and transmitting (21,23) is performed on each block individually. The produced bit-stream (O) is quantized to a desired bit-rate by simple truncating (3) the bit-stream (O) at a desired position.

Abstract: The invention relates to a method in image processing, wherein an image in digital form is in coding phase compressed, quantized by a quantization matrix (QL, QC) and coded by a coding matrix (HL1, HK1, HL2), wherein one or more data frames are formed. In a decoding phase decoding, dequantization and decompression is carried out to the information comprised in the data frame. One or more matrices (QL, QC, HL1, HK1, HL2) used in the coding phase are left out of the data frame, wherein the corresponding matrix is stored into coding device (8) performing the decoding phase.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for assigning codeblocks to coders operating in parallel is described. In one embodiment, the method comprises decomposing input data into a plurality of code-blocks, and assigning the plurality of code-blocks, on a code-block basis, to a plurality of MQ coders to code the plurality of code-blocks in parallel to balance, to the extent possible, an amount of coding to be performed by each of the plurality of MQ coders.

Abstract: A wavelet-based image compression system and method are presented. Compression is accomplished by performing a wavelet transformation of an input digital image. The resulting wavelet coefficients are compared to a threshold value. Coefficients falling below the threshold are discarded. The remaining coefficients are quantized. The quantized coefficients are then compressed using an entropy encoding technique, such as arithmetic, run length, or Huffman encoding, or a combination of Huffman and run length encoding. The wavelet transform can be an integer wavelet transform derived using a lifting scheme or correction method, while the quantization scheme can be sub-band oriented. Input color image pixels can be reduced using a color table. In addition, color pixels can be transformed between color spaces prior to wavelet transformation.

Abstract: A face area in an image including a figure is perceived to have appropriate color and/or density without being affected by color and/or density of an area surrounding the face area. Face area extracting means extracts a face area from an image including a figure, and surrounding color density detecting means detects color density information indicating color and/or density (color density) of an area surrounding the face area. Adjusting means adjusts color density of the face area based on the color density information detected by the surrounding color density information detecting means. By reproducing the image after the adjustment, the face area is perceived to have appropriate color density without being affected by the color density of the surrounding area.

Abstract: Rebinning methods and arrangements are provided that significantly improve the 3D wavelet compression performance of the image based rendering data, such as, e.g., concentric mosaic image data. Through what is essentially a selective cutting and pasting process the image data is divided into stripes that are then used to form a set of multi-perspective panoramas. The rebinning process greatly improves the performance of the cross shot filtering, and thus improves the transform and coding efficiency of 3D wavelet codecs. While the region of support after rebinning may cease to be rectangular in some cases, a padding scheme and an arbitrary shape wavelet coder can be implemented to encode the result data volume of the smart rebinning. With an arbitrary shape wavelet codec, the rebinning outperforms MPEG-2 by 3.7 dB, outperforms direct 3D wavelet coder by 4.3 dB, and outperforms a reference block coder (RBC) by 3.2 dB on certain tested concentric mosaic image scenes.

Abstract: In this invention, when frame encoded data is to be generated on the basis of data obtained by separating image data and sound data contained in frame data of a motion image and hierarchically encoding both the data, frequency subbands of the same significance level in the hierarchically image encoded data and sound data are grouped, and frame encoded data is generated by arranging these groups in descending order of significance level. This makes it possible to appropriately give scalability to both the image data and sound data already hierarchically encoded, without decoding them, and generate encoded data containing both the data. Since encoded data of image data and sound data can be transmitted by grouping them in appropriate units, the receiving side can efficiently utilize the encoded data.

Abstract: A system and method for reducing image artifacts from a processed image are disclosed. An image enhancing system can be implemented with a memory device, an image region segmenter, an artifact detector, and a filter. The region segmenter may be configured to sub-divide an image frame. Each region may be processed by the artifact detector to identify when an image artifact is present in the region. The identified regions may be forwarded to the filter to smooth the harshness of the picture element discontinuities.