Patents by Inventor Mark Zimmer

Mark Zimmer 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).

  • Publication number: 20190370942
    Abstract: Systems and methods are disclosed for correcting red-eye artifacts in a target image of a subject. Images, captured by a camera, including a raw image, are used to generate the target image. An eye region of the target image is modulated to correct for the red-eye artifacts, wherein correction is carried out based on information extracted from at least one of the raw image and the target image. Modulation comprises detecting landmarks associated with the eye region; estimating spectral response of the red eye artifacts; segmenting an image region of the eye based on the estimated spectral response of the red eye artifacts and the detected landmarks, forming a repair mask; and modifying an image region associated with the repair mask.
    Type: Application
    Filed: May 29, 2019
    Publication date: December 5, 2019
    Inventors: Alexis GATT, David HAYWARD, Emmanuel PIUZE-PHANEUF, Mark ZIMMER, Yingjun BAI, Zhigang FAN
  • Patent number: 10402934
    Abstract: Disclosed is a system for producing images including techniques for reducing the memory and processing power required for such operations. The system provides techniques for programmatically representing a graphics problem. The system further provides techniques for reducing and optimizing graphics problems for rendering with consideration of the system resources, such as the availability of a compatible GPU.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 21, 2017
    Date of Patent: September 3, 2019
    Assignee: Apple Inc.
    Inventors: John Harper, Ralph Brunner, Peter Graffagnino, Mark Zimmer
  • Publication number: 20180088776
    Abstract: The techniques disclosed herein may use various sensors to infer a frame of reference for a hand-held device. In fact, with various inertial clues from accelerometer, pyrometer, and other instruments that report their states in real time, it is possible to track a Frenet frame of the device in real time to provide an instantaneous (or continuous) 3D frame-of-reference. In addition to—or in place of—calculating this instantaneous (or continuous) frame of reference, the position of a user's head may either be inferred or calculated directly by using one or more of a device's optical sensors, e.g., an optical camera, infrared camera, laser, etc. With knowledge of the 3D frame-of-reference for the display and/or knowledge of the position of the user's head, more realistic virtual 3D depictions of the graphical objects on the device's display may be created—and interacted with—by the user.
    Type: Application
    Filed: October 2, 2017
    Publication date: March 29, 2018
    Inventors: Ricardo Motta, Mark Zimmer, Geoff Stahl, David Hayward, Frank Doepke
  • Publication number: 20170345123
    Abstract: Disclosed is a system for producing images including techniques for reducing the memory and processing power required for such operations. The system provides techniques for programmatically representing a graphics problem. The system further provides techniques for reducing and optimizing graphics problems for rendering with consideration of the system resources, such as the availability of a compatible GPU.
    Type: Application
    Filed: June 21, 2017
    Publication date: November 30, 2017
    Inventors: John Harper, Ralph Brunner, Peter Graffagnino, Mark Zimmer
  • Patent number: 9778815
    Abstract: The techniques disclosed herein may use various sensors to infer a frame of reference for a hand-held device. In fact, with various inertial clues from accelerometer, gyrometer, and other instruments that report their states in real time, it is possible to track a Frenet frame of the device in real time to provide an instantaneous (or continuous) 3D frame-of-reference. In addition to—or in place of—calculating this instantaneous (or continuous) frame of reference, the position of a user's head may either be inferred or calculated directly by using one or more of a device's optical sensors, e.g., an optical camera, infrared camera, laser, etc. With knowledge of the 3D frame-of-reference for the display and/or knowledge of the position of the user's head, more realistic virtual 3D depictions of the graphical objects on the device's display may be created—and interacted with—by the user.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 13, 2016
    Date of Patent: October 3, 2017
    Assignee: Apple Inc.
    Inventors: Ricardo Motta, Mark Zimmer, Geoff Stahl, David Hayward, Frank Doepke
  • Patent number: 9710896
    Abstract: Systems and methods for reducing chrominance (chroma) noise in image data are provided. In one example of such a method, image data in YCC format may be received into logic of an image signal processor. Using the logic, noise may be filtered from a first chrominance component or a second chrominance component, or both, of the image data, using a sparse filter and a noise threshold. The noise threshold may be determined based at least in part on two of the components of the YCC image data.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 10, 2015
    Date of Patent: July 18, 2017
    Assignee: Apple Inc.
    Inventors: Suk Hwan Lim, Mark Zimmer
  • Patent number: 9691118
    Abstract: Disclosed is a system for producing images including techniques for reducing the memory and processing power required for such operations. The system provides techniques for programmatically representing a graphics problem. The system further provides techniques for reducing and optimizing graphics problems for rendering with consideration of the system resources, such as the availability of a compatible GPU.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 20, 2014
    Date of Patent: June 27, 2017
    Assignee: Apple Inc.
    Inventors: John Harper, Ralph Brunner, Peter Graffagnino, Mark Zimmer
  • Publication number: 20170115846
    Abstract: The techniques disclosed herein may use various sensors to infer a frame of reference for a hand-held device. In fact, with various inertial clues from accelerometer, gyrometer, and other instruments that report their states in real time, it is possible to track a Frenet frame of the device in real time to provide an instantaneous (or continuous) 3D frame-of-reference. In addition to—or in place of—calculating this instantaneous (or continuous) frame of reference, the position of a user's head may either be inferred or calculated directly by using one or more of a device's optical sensors, e.g., an optical camera, infrared camera, laser, etc. With knowledge of the 3D frame-of-reference for the display and/or knowledge of the position of the user's head, more realistic virtual 3D depictions of the graphical objects on the device's display may be created—and interacted with—by the user.
    Type: Application
    Filed: July 13, 2016
    Publication date: April 27, 2017
    Inventors: Ricardo Motta, Mark Zimmer, Geoff Stahl, David Hayward, Frank Doepke
  • Patent number: 9619862
    Abstract: This disclosure pertains to novel devices, methods, and computer readable media for performing raw camera noise reduction using a novel, so-called “alignment mapping” technique to more effectively separate structure from noise in an image, in order to aid in the denoising process. Alignment mapping allows for the extraction of more structure from the image and also the ability to understand the image structure, yielding information for edge direction, edge length, and corner locations within the image. This information can be used to smooth long edges properly and to prevent tight image details, e.g., text, from being overly smoothed. In alignment maps, the amount of noise may be used to compute thresholds and scaling parameters used in the preparation of the alignment map. According to some embodiments, a feature map may also be created for the image. Finally, the image may be smoothed using the created feature map as a mask.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 29, 2015
    Date of Patent: April 11, 2017
    Assignee: Apple Inc.
    Inventor: Mark Zimmer
  • Patent number: 9443292
    Abstract: This disclosure pertains to novel devices, methods, and computer readable media for performing “blind” color defringing on images. In one embodiment, the blind defringing process begins with blind color edge alignment. This process largely cancels every kind of fringe, except for axial chromatic aberration. Next, the process looks at the edges and computes natural high and low colors to either side of the edge, attempting to get new pixel colors that aren't contaminated by the fringe color. Next, the process resolves the pixel's estimated new color by interpolating between the low and high colors, based on the green variation across the edge and the amount of green in the pixel that is being repaired. Care is taken to prevent artifacts in areas that generally do not fringe, like red-black boundaries and skin tone. Finally, the process computes the final repaired color by using luminance-scaling of the new pixel color estimate.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 29, 2015
    Date of Patent: September 13, 2016
    Assignee: Apple Inc.
    Inventor: Mark Zimmer
  • Patent number: 9443290
    Abstract: This disclosure pertains to novel devices, methods, and computer readable media for performing color defringing on image data. In photography, particularly RAW images, different artifacts can affect the quality of the edges of objects in the image. This effect is generally more noticeable when the edge has high contrast. One motivation for the described techniques is the understanding that, typically, not all pixels of an image exhibit color fringing. Usually, fringing only occurs in high-contrast edges. Mere masking of the effects of the whole-image operations can improve the result, but further improvements are still possible. This disclosure also pertains to novel devices and computer readable media for performing red-blue color reconstruction on data from a variety of color filter arrays (CFAs).
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 26, 2013
    Date of Patent: September 13, 2016
    Assignee: Apple Inc.
    Inventor: Mark Zimmer
  • Patent number: 9417763
    Abstract: The techniques disclosed herein use a compass, MEMS accelerometer, GPS module, and MEMS gyrometer to infer a frame of reference for a hand-held device. This can provide a true Frenet frame, i.e., X- and Y-vectors for the display, and also a Z-vector that points perpendicularly to the display. In fact, with various inertial clues from accelerometer, gyrometer, and other instruments that report their states in real time, it is possible to track the Frenet frame of the device in real time to provide a continuous 3D frame-of-reference. Once this continuous frame of reference is known, the position of a user's eyes may either be inferred or calculated directly by using a device's front-facing camera. With the position of the user's eyes and a continuous 3D frame-of-reference for the display, more realistic virtual 3D depictions of the objects on the device's display may be created and interacted with by the user.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 15, 2014
    Date of Patent: August 16, 2016
    Assignee: Apple Inc.
    Inventors: Mark Zimmer, Geoff Stahl, David Hayward, Frank Doepke
  • Patent number: 9411413
    Abstract: The techniques disclosed herein may use various sensors to infer a frame of reference for a hand-held device. In fact, with various inertial clues from accelerometer, gyrometer, and other instruments that report their states in real time, it is possible to track a Frenet frame of the device in real time to provide an instantaneous (or continuous) 3D frame-of-reference. In addition to—or in place of—calculating this instantaneous (or continuous) frame of reference, the position of a user's head may either be inferred or calculated directly by using one or more of a device's optical sensors, e.g., an optical camera, infrared camera, laser, etc. With knowledge of the 3D frame-of-reference for the display and/or knowledge of the position of the user's head, more realistic virtual 3D depictions of the graphical objects on the device's display may be created—and interacted with—by the user.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 11, 2014
    Date of Patent: August 9, 2016
    Assignee: Apple Inc.
    Inventors: Ricardo Motta, Mark Zimmer, Geoff Stahl, David Hayward, Frank Doepke
  • Publication number: 20160189686
    Abstract: Disclosed are a system and method for computing a picture. Instead of loading a file that contains the image from memory, the present invention provides for a system and method for opening and retaining a procedural recipe and a small set of instructions that can be executed to compute a picture. The picture can be computed very quickly using a GPU (graphics processing unit), and can be made to move on demand. When a part of the image is needed to composite, that part is computed using a fragment program on the GPU using the procedural recipe and a specially written fragment program into a temporary VRAM buffer. After it is computed and composited, the buffer containing the result of the fragment program may be discarded.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 8, 2016
    Publication date: June 30, 2016
    Inventors: Mark Zimmer, Ralph Brunner, Imran Chaudhri
  • Patent number: 9292944
    Abstract: Disclosed are a system and method for computing a picture. Instead of loading a file that contains the image from memory, the present invention provides for a system and method for opening and retaining a procedural recipe and a small set of instructions that can be executed to compute a picture. The picture can be computed very quickly using a GPU (graphics processing unit), and can be made to move on demand. When a part of the image is needed to composite, that part is computed using a fragment program on the GPU using the procedural recipe and a specially written fragment program into a temporary VRAM buffer. After it is computed and composited, the buffer containing the result of the fragment program may be discarded.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 16, 2014
    Date of Patent: March 22, 2016
    Assignee: Apple Inc.
    Inventors: Mark Zimmer, Ralph Brunner, Imran Chaudhri
  • Publication number: 20150348244
    Abstract: This disclosure pertains to novel devices, methods, and computer readable media for performing “blind” color defringing on images. In one embodiment, the blind defringing process begins with blind color edge alignment. This process largely cancels every kind of fringe, except for axial chromatic aberration. Next, the process looks at the edges and computes natural high and low colors to either side of the edge, attempting to get new pixel colors that aren't contaminated by the fringe color. Next, the process resolves the pixel's estimated new color by interpolating between the low and high colors, based on the green variation across the edge and the amount of green in the pixel that is being repaired. Care is taken to prevent artifacts in areas that generally do not fringe, like red-black boundaries and skin tone. Finally, the process computes the final repaired color by using luminance-scaling of the new pixel color estimate.
    Type: Application
    Filed: May 29, 2015
    Publication date: December 3, 2015
    Inventor: Mark Zimmer
  • Publication number: 20150350576
    Abstract: This disclosure pertains to novel devices, methods, and computer readable media for performing raw camera noise reduction using a novel, so-called “alignment mapping” technique to more effectively separate structure from noise in an image, in order to aid in the denoising process. Alignment mapping allows for the extraction of more structure from the image and also the ability to understand the image structure, yielding information for edge direction, edge length, and corner locations within the image. This information can be used to smooth long edges properly and to prevent tight image details, e.g., text, from being overly smoothed. In alignment maps, the amount of noise may be used to compute thresholds and scaling parameters used in the preparation of the alignment map. According to some embodiments, a feature map may also be created for the image. Finally, the image may be smoothed using the created feature map as a mask.
    Type: Application
    Filed: May 29, 2015
    Publication date: December 3, 2015
    Inventor: Mark Zimmer
  • Publication number: 20150317772
    Abstract: Systems and methods for reducing chrominance (chroma) noise in image data are provided. In one example of such a method, image data in YCC format may be received into logic of an image signal processor. Using the logic, noise may be filtered from a first chrominance component or a second chrominance component, or both, of the image data, using a sparse filter and a noise threshold. The noise threshold may be determined based at least in part on two of the components of the YCC image data.
    Type: Application
    Filed: July 10, 2015
    Publication date: November 5, 2015
    Inventors: Suk Hwan Lim, Mark Zimmer
  • Patent number: 9142012
    Abstract: Systems and methods for reducing chrominance (chroma) noise in image data are provided. In one example of such a method, image data in YCC format may be received into logic of an image signal processor. Using the logic, noise may be filtered from a first chrominance component or a second chrominance component, or both, of the image data, using a sparse filter and a noise threshold. The noise threshold may be determined based at least in part on two of the components of the YCC image data.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 31, 2012
    Date of Patent: September 22, 2015
    Assignee: APPLE INC.
    Inventors: Suk Hwan Lim, Mark A. Zimmer
  • Patent number: 9101348
    Abstract: A patient side cart for a teleoperated surgical system can include at least one manipulator arm portion for holding a surgical instrument, a steering interface, and a drive system. The steering interface may be configured to detect a force applied by a user to the steering interface indicating a desired movement for the teleoperated surgical system. The drive system can include at least one driven wheel, a control module, and a model section. The control module may receive as input a signal from the steering interface corresponding to the force applied by the user to the steering interface. The control module may be configured to output a desired movement signal corresponding to the signal received from the steering interface. The model section can include a model of movement behavior of the patient side cart, the model section outputting a movement command output to drive the driven wheel.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 13, 2014
    Date of Patent: August 11, 2015
    Assignee: INTUITIVE SURGICAL OPERATIONS, INC.
    Inventors: Paul G. Griffiths, Arjang M. Hourtash, Paul W. Mohr, David Robinson, Nitish Swarup, John Zabinski, Mark Zimmer