Patents Examined by Wenpeng Chen
  • Patent number: 8483483
    Abstract: An image forming apparatus that allows easy and reliable extraction of a hand-written image and allowing reliable execution of a desired process on image data based on the hand-written image is provided. For this purpose, during a mark adding process, a scanner unit and an image processing unit form YMCK data based on an original image; a specific area extracting unit extracts image data of a specific area from the YMCK data; a mark image adding unit combines image data of the specific area with the mark image data to form combined data; and a printer unit outputs a first image based on the combined data. During image processing of the specific area, the scanner unit forms RGB data based on the first image; the mark area extracting unit extracts image data of the mark area from the RGB data; the specific area image processing unit performs prescribed image processing on the image data of mark area; and the printer unit outputs a second image based on the YMCK data after the prescribed image processing.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 23, 2010
    Date of Patent: July 9, 2013
    Assignee: Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventor: Kazuyuki Ohnishi
  • Patent number: 8478031
    Abstract: Image processing in which input image signals are converted into output image signals represented as a combination of colored and colorless colorant amounts. For each pixel of an input image represented by the input image signal, it is determined whether the pixel belongs to a high or low density range. For each pixel belonging to the high density range, it is specified whether the pixel belongs to a high or low frequency region of the input image. Color conversion with a 1st conversion parameter is applied to an input image signal corresponding to a pixel belonging to the high frequency region, and color conversion with a 2nd conversion parameter is applied to an input image signal corresponding to a pixel belonging to the low frequency region.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 19, 2010
    Date of Patent: July 2, 2013
    Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventor: Chiaki Kaneko
  • Patent number: 8478068
    Abstract: An image processing device includes a weighted image generation section that generates a weighted image in which at least one of an object-of-interest area of an input image and an edge of a background area other than the object-of-interest area is weighted, a composition grid generation section that generates a composition grid that includes grid lines that are weighted, and a composition evaluation section that performs composition evaluation calculations on the input image based on the weighted image and the composition grid.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 17, 2010
    Date of Patent: July 2, 2013
    Assignee: Olympus Corporation
    Inventor: Naoyuki Miyashita
  • Patent number: 8472737
    Abstract: In general, in one embodiment, a starfield image as seen by an object is analyzed. Compressive samples are taken of the starfield image and, in the compressed domain, processed to remove noise. Stars in the starfield image are identified and used to determine an attitude of the object.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 30, 2010
    Date of Patent: June 25, 2013
    Assignee: The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc.
    Inventors: Yaron Rachlin, Benjamin F. Lane, Juha-Pekka J. Laine, Robin M. A. Dawson, Christopher C. Yu
  • Patent number: 8472735
    Abstract: In general, in one embodiment, a starfield image as seen by an object is analyzed. Compressive samples are taken of the starfield image and, in the compressed domain, processed to remove noise. Stars in the starfield image are identified and used to determine an attitude of the object.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 30, 2010
    Date of Patent: June 25, 2013
    Assignee: The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc.
    Inventors: Benjamin F. Lane, Yaron Rachlin, Juha-Pekka J. Laine, Robin M. A. Dawson, Christopher C. Yu
  • Patent number: 8472736
    Abstract: In general, in one embodiment, a starfield image as seen by an object is analyzed. Compressive samples are taken of the starfield image and, in the compressed domain, processed to remove noise. Stars in the starfield image are identified and used to determine an attitude of the object.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 30, 2010
    Date of Patent: June 25, 2013
    Assignee: The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc.
    Inventors: Benjamin F. Lane, Yaron Rachlin, Juha-Pekka J. Laine, Robin M. A. Dawson, Christopher C. Yu
  • Patent number: 8463032
    Abstract: In a color image processing apparatus, in a compression process section (an image compressing apparatus), when an original document is compressed, the edges of black texts and/or line drawings in the original document is detected, then a foreground layer (a first image) is generated in which the detected edges are expressed in the form of a binary image, and then lossless compression is performed on the foreground layer. Further, a background layer (a second image) is generated in which a density difference of the edges from the other parts in the original document is reduced, and then lossy compression is performed on the background layer. Then, these layers are combined into a compressed file.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 18, 2011
    Date of Patent: June 11, 2013
    Assignee: Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventor: Teruhiko Matsuoka
  • Patent number: 8463029
    Abstract: An image processing apparatus includes a face detection unit configured to detect a face area of a person from an image, and a head detection area setting unit configured to set a head detection area based on the detected face area of the person. An edge detection unit is configured to detect an edge from the set head detection area, and to generate an edge image which is comprised of the detected edge. An edge deletion unit is configured to delete an edge existing between the face and hair from the edge image, and an ellipse detection unit is configured to detect a candidate ellipse corresponding to a head area from an edge image from which an edge is deleted by the edge deletion unit.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 22, 2010
    Date of Patent: June 11, 2013
    Assignee: Canon Kbaushiki Kaisha
    Inventor: Muling Guo
  • Patent number: 8463036
    Abstract: Shape-based search of a collection of content associated with one or more images of inventory items (“inventory images”) is enabled at least in part by associating the collection of content and/or its associated inventory images with representative refinement shapes. Inventory items may be grouped into categories and at least one refinement shape may be created for each of the categories. A refinement-shape hierarchy may be created by arranging the refinement shapes into parent and child refinement shapes. Inventory images may be associated to at least one of the refinement shapes of the refinement-shape hierarchy based at least in part on similarities between the refinement shapes and shapes of the inventory items reflected in the inventory images.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 30, 2010
    Date of Patent: June 11, 2013
    Assignee: A9.com, Inc.
    Inventors: Sunil Ramesh, Arnab Dhua, Gurumurthy D. Ramkumar, Gautam Bhargava, Sonja E. Hyde-Moyer
  • Patent number: 8463035
    Abstract: A spectrally mosaiced digital image is provided with missing color data imputed for each pixel. Circuitry is provided that is configured to perform at least a portion of the calculations related to demosaicing a high dynamic range image.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 27, 2010
    Date of Patent: June 11, 2013
    Assignee: Gentex Corporation
    Inventors: Jon H. Bechtel, Jeremy C. Andrus, Tom B. Sherman
  • Patent number: 8463061
    Abstract: Encoding and decoding devices and methods are provided. All the components of LH, HL, HH sub-band coefficients of the same hierarchy and the same space coordinate are extracted as a set from a wavelet sub-band space. Furthermore, it is judged whether each component of each coefficient is zero and as 1-bit judgment result, the respective judgment results are combined to obtain multi-bit flag information. Upon encoding, firstly, the Huffman information is subjected to variable-length encoding by the Huffman encoding code. After this, only the coefficient values which are not zero are similarly subjected to the variable-length encoding by the Huffman code or the like and outputted.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 13, 2007
    Date of Patent: June 11, 2013
    Assignee: NEC Corporation
    Inventor: Jun Takada
  • Patent number: 8463040
    Abstract: A method for locating tables in documents includes defining a plurality of tiles for a document, for each tile, determining a horizontal profile and a vertical profile, determining the location of lines by means of gradients of the horizontal profiles and the vertical profiles, selecting from the lines, the lines that are persistent, determining a rectangle in at least one corner of the document based on the persistent lines, and applying heuristics in order to accept or reject a determined rectangle as a table of the document. An apparatus for automatically locating a table in a document applies the method for locating tables in documents.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 27, 2012
    Date of Patent: June 11, 2013
    Assignee: OCE Technolgies B.V.
    Inventors: Vincent Jean-Marie Noël Le Glaunec, Christophe Antoine Leynadier
  • Patent number: 8463026
    Abstract: Outlier images—those images that differ substantially from other images in a set—can be automatically identified. One or more penalty values can be assigned to each image that quantifies how different that image is from others in the set. A threshold can be determined based on the set of penalty values. Each image whose penalty values are above the threshold is an outlier image. The penalty values can be the sum of per-pixel penalty values multiplied by the number of pixels with nonzero penalty values. A per-pixel penalty value can be the difference between a color value for that pixel and a predetermined range of color values, based on corresponding pixels in other images. The per-pixel penalty value can be determined for each component color and then optionally summed together. The threshold penalty values can be adjusted to provide for greater, or less, sensitivity to differences among the images.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 22, 2010
    Date of Patent: June 11, 2013
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Marcelo De Barros, Satya Pradeep Kanduri, Nabeel Kaushal, Mikhail Parakhin, Manish Mittal, Adam Edlavitch
  • Patent number: 8462982
    Abstract: The invention relates to a method for inserting watermark assistance data in a bitstream of coded data comprising the step of inserting, in the bitstream, identification data identifying coded data to be substituted and, for each coded data to be substituted, at least one substitution data. The method further comprises a step of inserting in the bitstream a format data defining a manner of substituting the coded data to be substituted by the substitution data.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 20, 2010
    Date of Patent: June 11, 2013
    Assignee: Thomson Licensing
    Inventors: Marie-Jean Colaitis, Pascal Marie
  • Patent number: 8457420
    Abstract: This invention provides a technique to turn off a distortion suppression function within the range in which image quality degradation is allowed, in order to increase the processing speed at the time of decoding. For this purpose, an apparatus of the invention rewrites parameter information in a header with information indicating that no distortion suppression processing has been performed, and decodes encoded image data including the rewritten header, when the header contains parameter information indicating that the distortion suppression processing has been performed only before the first frequency conversion.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 24, 2010
    Date of Patent: June 4, 2013
    Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventor: Hiroki Kishi
  • Patent number: 8447107
    Abstract: Systems and methods are provided for calculating and using histogram descriptors to compare images and to identify visually similar content. According to at least one embodiment, multiple histograms descriptors are calculated for individual images of a collection of content. These histogram descriptors may be used to identify two or more visually similar images in the collection of content. For example, if a user identifies an image of an item of interest, then embodiments search across the collection of content to identify other images of items that are visually similar to the selected item of interest. To do so, embodiments search across the histogram descriptors of the images in the collection of content to identify one or more images that have histograms descriptors that are similar to the histograms descriptors of the image of the selected item of interest.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 30, 2010
    Date of Patent: May 21, 2013
    Assignee: A9.com, Inc.
    Inventors: Arnab Dhua, Sunil Ramesh
  • Patent number: 8447108
    Abstract: Provided are an apparatus and a method for extracting a target related to an algorithm separating the target and a background by using statistical characteristics of the target and the background among target extracting methods required in a weight value center tracking method, and recording media storing a program performing the method. According to the present invention, it is possible to effectively separate the target region and the background region from each other and it is possible to improve reliability in target extracting performance.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 22, 2010
    Date of Patent: May 21, 2013
    Assignee: LIG NEX1 Co., Ltd.
    Inventor: Se Kyung Park
  • Patent number: 8447130
    Abstract: Implementations of a history-based temporal motion noise filtering technique that considers the temporal smooth among multiple pictures as well as the block-based technique to estimate the noise/motion history to better reflect the spatial/temporal smoothness in the local neighborhood are provided. In particular, implementations of the per-pixel blending technique in the block-based noise measurement may be used to better manipulate pixels in both the spatial and temporal domains. A global noise detection technique may be used to estimate the occurrence and/or strength of the noise. A content adaptive spatial filtering content adaptive spatial filter based on a local edge measurement may be used to reduce picture noise as well as preserve edge sharpness. Implementations may be configured for various applications.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 31, 2007
    Date of Patent: May 21, 2013
    Assignee: Intel Corporation
    Inventor: Yi-Jen Chiu
  • Patent number: 8433134
    Abstract: Included are determining a position of a pixel serving as an extraction subject by using first image data photographed under a first light source; determining an extraction range corresponding to the determined position, by using a color value of the pixel at the determined position and a color value of a pixel at a peripheral position around the determined position in the first image data; calculating a first representative color value from the first image data and a second representative color value from second image data photographed under a second light source, on the basis of the position of the pixel serving as the extraction subject and the extraction range; and generating a color correction condition for converting a color value depending on the first light source into a color value depending on the second light source.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 11, 2010
    Date of Patent: April 30, 2013
    Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventor: Toshiyuki Ishii
  • Patent number: 8422778
    Abstract: During compressing an image at the compression processing section (image compressing apparatus), the color image processing apparatus detects edge of text and/or line art, generates the foreground layer represented by binary image for showing the detected edge, compresses the foreground layer with lossless compression, and compresses the background layer which is an image except the foreground layer with lossy compression. Furthermore, the color image processing apparatus sets the foreground layer color different from a color of text or line art, and provides information representing the set color into the compression file. As the set color, the color image processing apparatus utilizes the overall color representative for whole region of the image, or the text-vicinity color in the image. The edge region of the text and/or line art are represented with such the set color on the reproduced image based on the compression file.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 20, 2010
    Date of Patent: April 16, 2013
    Assignee: Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventor: Teruhiko Matsuoka