Abstract: Techniques for creating a High Dynamic Range (HDR) image within a consumer grade digital camera from a series of images of a scene captured at different exposure levels, and displaying the HDR image on the camera's built-in display, are provided. The approach employs mixing images of the series to incorporate both scene shadow and highlight details, and the removing of “ghost” image artifacts appearing in the mixed HDR image resulting from movement in the scene over the time the series images are captured. The low computational resource utilization of the present invention's image mixing and ghost removal processing operations, along with the present invention's ability to commence image mixing and ghost removal prior to the acquisition of all series images, can significantly reduce the time required to generate and display a tone mapped HDR image.

Abstract: Techniques for creating a High Dynamic Range (HDR) image within a consumer grade digital camera from a series of images of a scene captured at different exposure levels, and displaying the HDR image on the camera's built-in display are provided. The approach employs mixing images of the series to incorporate both scene shadow and highlight details, and the removing of “ghost” image artifacts appearing in the mixed HDR image resulting from movement in the scene over the time the series images are captured. The low computational resource utilization of the image mixing and ghost removal processing operations, along with the ability to commence image mixing and ghost removal prior to the acquisition of all series images, can significantly reduce the time required to generate and display a tone mapped HDR image.

Abstract: A method and image detection device are provided for removal of undesired objects from image data. In one embodiment, a method includes detecting image data for a first frame, detecting image data for a second frame, and detecting motion of an undesired object based, at least in part, on image data for the first and second frames. Image data of the first frame may be replaced with image data of the second frame to generate corrected image data, wherein the undesired object is removed from the corrected image data. The corrected image data may be stored.

Abstract: Techniques for creating a High Dynamic Range (HDR) image within a consumer grade digital camera from a series of images of a scene captured at different exposure levels, and displaying the HDR image on the camera's built-in display, are provided. The approach employs mixing images of the series to incorporate both scene shadow and highlight details, and the removing of “ghost” image artifacts appearing in the mixed HDR image resulting from movement in the scene over the time the series images are captured. The low computational resource utilization of the present invention's image mixing and ghost removal processing operations, along with the present invention's ability to commence image mixing and ghost removal prior to the acquisition of all series images, can significantly reduce the time required to generate and display a tone mapped HDR image.

Abstract: A method for detection the presence of a man-made object partially occluded in a natural environment. The method includes the steps of providing an image segment from three dimensional ladar data, grouping one or more coplanar portion of the pixels into a cluster of planar sections, each planar section including three or more pixels, classifying the cluster based on one or more criterion selected from a group of criteria.

Abstract: A new basis vector search process that directly results in an optimal linear weighting for a VSELP (Vector Sum Excited Linear Prediction) coder, thus avoiding the need to perform an extensive search. In the present invention, the conventional search process is replaced by a direct formula, thus avoiding the time consuming searching procedure. Using a simple mathematical relationship, the process of filtering the basis signals with an impulse response filter h(n) every subframe is avoided. A simple theorem has been developed to reduce the computation involved in carrying out the filtering of the basis signals with h(n), and is referred to as the switching convolution theorem. As a result, the computation time necessary to produce the optimal weighting is reduced by a factor of from 3 to 4, while maintaining the output quality of the coder. The new apparatus and method are based upon a set of equations that includes several experimentally justified assumptions.