Patents by Inventor Ben G. Fitzpatrick

Ben G. Fitzpatrick has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Patent number: 7860344
    Abstract: Improved apparatus and methodology for image processing and object tracking that, inter alia, reduces noise. In one embodiment, the methodology is applied to moving targets such as missiles in flight, and comprises processing sequences of images that have been corrupted by one or more noise sources (e.g., sensor noise, medium noise, and/or target reflection noise). In this embodiment, a multi-dimensional image is acquired for a first time step t; the acquired image is normalized and sampled, and then segmented into target and background pixel sets. Intensity statistics of the pixel sets are determined, and a prior probability image from a previous time step smoothed. The smoothed prior image is then shifted to produce an updated prior image, and a posterior probability image calculated using the updated prior probability. Finally, the position of the target is extracted using the posterior probability image. A tracking system and controller utilizing this methodology are also disclosed.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 6, 2005
    Date of Patent: December 28, 2010
    Assignee: Stochastech Corporation
    Inventors: Ben G. Fitzpatrick, Yun Wang
  • Patent number: 7813581
    Abstract: Improved methodology for image processing and object tracking that, inter alia, reduces noise. In one embodiment, the methodology is applied to moving targets, and comprises processing sequences of images that have been corrupted by one or more noise sources (e.g., sensor noise, medium noise, and/or target reflection noise). A likelihood or similar logical construct (e.g., Bayes' rule) is applied to the individual images (or aggregations thereof) of an image sequence in order to generate a posterior image for each observed image. The posterior images are fed-forward to the determination of the posterior image for one or more subsequent images (after smoothing), thereby making these subsequent determinations more accurate. The net result is a more accurate and noise-reduced representation (and location) of the target in each image.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 6, 2005
    Date of Patent: October 12, 2010
    Inventors: Ben G. Fitzpatrick, Allen Robert Tannenbaum