2625 results about "Edge detection" patented technology

In order to enhance accuracy of determination as to whether an object has contacted a screen and to enhance accuracy of calculation of a coordinate position of the object, edges of an imaged image are detected by an edge detection circuit 76, and by using the edges, it is determined by a contact determination circuit 77 whether or not the object has contacted the screen. Moreover, in order to appropriately control sensitivity of optical sensors in response to external light, by a calibration circuit 93, a drive condition of the optical sensors is changed based on output values of the optical sensors, which are varied in response to the external light.

Systems, methods and structures for combining virtual reality and real-time environment by combining captured real-time video data and real-time 3D environment renderings to create a fused, that is, combined environment, including capturing video imagery in RGB or HSV/HSV color coordinate systems and processing it to determine which areas should be made transparent, or have other color modifications made, based on sensed cultural features, electromagnetic spectrum values, and/or sensor line-of-sight, wherein the sensed features can also include electromagnetic radiation characteristics such as color, infra-red, ultra-violet light values, cultural features can include patterns of these characteristics, such as object recognition using edge detection, and whereby the processed image is then overlaid on, and fused into a 3D environment to combine the two data sources into a single scene to thereby create an effect whereby a user can look through predesignated areas or “windows” in the video image to see into a 3D simulated world, and/or see other enhanced or reprocessed features of the captured image.

Certain embodiments of the present invention provide for a system and method for assessing the accuracy of a surgical navigation system. The method may include acquiring an X-ray image that captures a surgical instrument. The method may also include segmenting the surgical instrument in the X-ray image. In an embodiment, the segmenting may be performed using edge detection or pattern recognition. The distance between the predicted location of the surgical instrument tip and the actual location of the surgical instrument tip may be computed. The distance between the predicted location of the surgical instrument tip and the actual location of the surgical instrument tip may be compared with a threshold value. If the distance between the predicted location of the surgical instrument tip and the actual location of the surgical instrument tip is greater than the threshold value, the user may be alerted.

A catadioptric camera having a perspective camera and multiple curved mirrors, images the multiple curved mirrors and uses the epsilon constraint to establish a vertical parallax between points in one mirror and their corresponding reflection in another. An ASIFT transform is applied to all the mirror images to establish a collection of corresponding feature points, and edge detection is applied on mirror images to identify edge pixels. A first edge pixel in a first imaged mirror is selected, its 25 nearest feature points are identified, and a rigid transform is applied to them. The rigid transform is fitted to 25 corresponding feature points in a second imaged mirror. The closes edge pixel to the expected location as determined by the fitted rigid transform is identified, and its distance to the vertical parallax is determined. If the distance is not greater than predefined maximum, then it is deemed correlate to the edge pixel in the first imaged mirror.

The invention provides systems and methods for detection, grading, scoring and tele-screening of cancerous lesions. A complete scheme for automated quantitative analysis and assessment of human and animal tissue images of several types of cancers is presented. Various aspects of the invention are directed to the detection, grading, prediction and staging of prostate cancer on serial sections/slides of prostate core images, or biopsy images. Accordingly, the invention includes a variety of sub-systems, which could be used separately or in conjunction to automatically grade cancerous regions. Each system utilizes a different approach with a different feature set. For instance, in the quantitative analysis, textural-based and morphology-based features may be extracted at image- and (or) object-levels from regions of interest. Additionally, the invention provides sub-systems and methods for accurate detection and mapping of disease in whole slide digitized images by extracting new features through integration of one or more of the above-mentioned classification systems. The invention also addresses the modeling, qualitative analysis and assessment of 3-D histopathology images which assist pathologists in visualization, evaluation and diagnosis of diseased tissue. Moreover, the invention includes systems and methods for the development of a tele-screening system in which the proposed computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) systems. In some embodiments, novel methods for image analysis (including edge detection, color mapping characterization and others) are provided for use prior to feature extraction in the proposed CAD systems.

Embodiments of the present invention relate to methods and systems for detection and delineation of text characters in images which may contain combinations of text and graphical content. Embodiments of the present invention employ intensity contrast edge detection methods and intensity gradient direction determination methods in conjunction with analyses of intensity curve geometry to determine the presence of text and verify text edge identification. These methods may be used to identify text in mixed-content images, to determine text character edges and to achieve other image processing purposes.

An image processing apparatus and a recording medium which can improve the quality of a color document image. Smoothing conditions which are defined by three parameters of “filter size”, “offset”, and “overlap” are set. An edge image which was generated in an edge detection processing is referred to, and a determination is made as to whether an edge pixel exists in a noticed region. When the edge pixel does not exist in the noticed region, a smoothing processing is carried out. When the edge pixel exists in the noticed region, it is determined inappropriate to effect the smoothing processing, and the process goes to a subsequent processing without effecting the smoothing processing. The processing is carried out until the image scanning ends. When the image scanning ends, the next smoothing conditions are set and the processing which is the same as the one described above is performed.

A method for tracking one or multiple objects from an input video sequence allows a user to select one or more regions that contain the object(s) of interest in the first and the last frame of their choice. An initialization component selects the current and the search frame and divides the selected region into equal sized macroblocks. An edge detection component computes the gradient of the current frame for each macroblock and a threshold component decides then which of the macroblocks contain sufficient information for tracking the desired object. A motion estimation component computes for each macroblock in the current frame its position in the search frame. The motion estimation component utilizes a search component that executes a novel search algorithm to find the best match. The mean absolute difference between two macroblocks is used as the matching criterion. The motion estimation component returns the estimated displacement vector for each block. An output component collects the motion vectors of all the predicted blocks and calculates the new position of the object in the next frame.

A method and apparatus for applying gradient edge detection to detect features in a biometric, such as a fingerprint, based on data representing an image of at least a portion of the biometric. The image is modeled as a function of the features. Data representing an image of the biometric is acquired, and features of the biometric are modeled for at least two resolutions. The method and apparatus improves analysis of both high-resolution images of biometrics of friction ridge containing skin that include resolved pores and lower resolution images of biometrics without resolved pores.

An interlaced to progressive scan video converter which identifies object edges and directions, and calculates new pixel values based on the edge information. Source image data from a single video field is analyzed to detect object edges and the orientation of those edges. A 2-dimensional array of image elements surrounding each pixel location in the field is high-pass filtered along a number of different rotational vectors, and a null or minimum in the set of filtered data indicates a candidate object edge as well as the direction of that edge. A 2-dimensional array of edge candidates surrounding each pixel location is characterized to invalidate false edges by determining the number of similar and dissimilar edge orientations in the array, and then disqualifying locations which have too many dissimilar or too few similar surrounding edge candidates. The surviving edge candidates are then passed through multiple low-pass and smoothing filters to remove edge detection irregularities and spurious detections, yielding a final edge detection value for each source image pixel location. For pixel locations with a valid edge detection, new pixel data for the progressive output image is calculated by interpolating from source image pixels which are located along the detected edge orientation.

An image recognition apparatus operates on data of a color image to obtain an edge image expressing the shapes of objects appearing in the color image, the apparatus including a section for expressing the color attributes of each pixel of the image as a color vector, in the form of a set of coordinates of an orthogonal color space, a section for applying predetermined arrays of numeric values as edge templates to derive for each pixel a number of edge vectors each corresponding to a specific edge direction, with each edge vector obtained as the difference between weighted vector sums of respective sets of color vectors of two sets of pixels which are disposed symmetrically opposing with respect to the corresponding edge direction, and a section for obtaining the maximum modulus of these edge vectors as a value of edge strength for the pixel which is being processed. By comparing the edge strength of a pixel with those of immediately adjacent pixels and with a predetermined threshold value, a decision can be reliably made for each pixel as to whether it is actually located on an edge and, if so, the direction of that edge.

A fusion night vision system having image intensification and thermal imaging capabilities includes an edge detection filter circuit to aid in acquiring and identifying targets. An outline of the thermal image is generated and combined with the image intensification image without obscuration of the image intensification image. The fusion night vision system may also include a parallax compensation circuit to overcome parallax problems as a result of the image intensification channel being spaced from the thermal channel. The fusion night vision system may also include a control circuit configured to maintain a perceived brightness through an eyepiece over a mix of image intensification information and thermal information. The fusion night vision system may incorporate a targeting mode that allows an operator to acquire a target without having the scene saturated by a laser pointer. The night vision system may also include a detector, an image combiner for forming a fused image from the detector and a display, and a camera aligned with image combiner for recording scene information processed by the first detector.

The present application provides an improved segmentation method and system for processing digital images that include an imaged document and surrounding image. A plurality of edge detection techniques are used to determine the edges of the imaged document and then segment the imaged document from the surrounding image.

The invention discloses a regional depth edge detection and binocular stereo matching-based three-dimensional reconstruction method, which is implemented by the following steps: (1) shooting a calibration plate image with a mark point at two proper angles by using two black and white cameras; (2) keeping the shooting angles constant and shooting two images of a shooting target object at the same time by using the same camera; (3) performing the epipolar line rectification of the two images of the target objects according to the nominal data of the camera; (4) searching the neighbor regions of each pixel of the two rectified images for a closed region depth edge and building a supporting window; (5) in the built window, computing a normalized cross-correlation coefficient of supported pixels and acquiring the matching price of a central pixel; (6) acquiring a parallax by using a confidence transmission optimization method having an acceleration updating system; (7) estimating an accurate parallax by a subpixel; and (8) computing the three-dimensional coordinates of an actual object point according to the matching relationship between the nominal data of the camera and the pixel and consequently reconstructing the three-dimensional point cloud of the object and reducing the three-dimensional information of a target.

The invention relates to an autonomously identifying and capturing method of a non-cooperative target of a space robot, comprising the main steps of (1) pose measurement based on stereoscopic vision, (2) autonomous path planning of the target capture of the space robot and (3) coordinative control of a space robot system, and the like. The pose measurement based on the stereoscopic vision is realized by processing images of a left camera and a right camera in real time, and computing the pose of a non-cooperative target star relative to a base and a tail end, wherein the processing comprises smoothing filtering, edge detection, linear extraction, and the like. The autonomous path planning of the target capture of the space robot comprises is realized by planning the motion tracks of joints in real time according to the pose measurement results. The coordinative control of the space robot system is realized by coordinately controlling mechanical arms and the base to realize the optimal control property of the whole system. In the autonomously identifying and capturing method, a self part of a spacecraft is directly used as an identifying and capturing object without installing a marker or a comer reflector on the target star or knowing the geometric dimension of the object, and the planned path can effectively avoid the singular point of dynamics and kinematics.

Ultrasound is used to provide input data for a blood pressure estimation scheme. The use of transcutaneous ultrasound provides arterial lumen area and pulse wave velocity information. In addition, ultrasound measurements are taken in such a way that all the data describes a single, uniform arterial segment. Therefore a computed area relates only to the arterial blood volume present. Also, the measured pulse wave velocity is directly related to the mechanical properties of the segment of elastic tube (artery) for which the blood volume is being measured. In a patient monitoring application, the operator of the ultrasound device is eliminated through the use of software that automatically locates the artery in the ultrasound data, e.g., using known edge detection techniques. Autonomous operation of the ultrasound system allows it to report blood pressure and blood flow traces to the clinical users without those users having to interpret an ultrasound image or operate an ultrasound imaging device.

Techniques are disclosed for enhancing the quality of a displayed image using a tactile or other texture display. In particular, the disclosed techniques leverage active-texture display technology to enhance the quality of graphics by providing, for example, outlining and/or shading when presenting a given image, so as to create the effect of increased contrast and image quality and/or to reduce observable glare. These effects can be present even at high viewing angles and in environments of high light reflection. To these ends, one or more graphics processes, such as edge-detection and/or shading, may be applied to an image to be displayed. In turn, an actuator element (e.g., microelectromechanical systems, or MEMS, devices) of the tactile display may be manipulated (e.g., in Z-height) to provide fine-grain adjustment of image attributes such as: pixel brightness/intensity; pixel color; edge highlighting; object outlining; effective shading; image contrast; and/or viewing angle.

Systems and methods of generating depth data using edge detection are disclosed. In a particular embodiment, first image data is received corresponding to a scene recorded by an image capture device at a first focus position at a first distance. Second image data is received corresponding to a second focus position at a second distance that is greater than the first distance. Edge detection generates first edge data corresponding to at least a first portion of the first image data and to generate second edge data corresponding to at least a second portion of the second image data. The edge detection detects presence or absence of an edge at each location of the first portion and the second portion to identify each detected edge as a hard or soft edge. Depth data is generated based on the edge data generated for the first and second focus positions.

The invention discloses a vision guiding AGV (Automatic Guided Vehicle) system and a method of an embedded system. Two cameras fixed on a trolley are used for acquiring guiding path information in real time, wherein the cameras and the ground form a certain angle to be inclined forwards and is used for acquiring prospect images; and the cameras are arranged at the middle part and the front part of the interior of the trolley, are vertical to the ground and are used for secondary exact location. The vision guiding AGV method comprises the following step of: embedding an anti-metal radio frequency mark on the ground surface of a key position, wherein a vehicle-mounted radio frequency card reader obtains information in the mark when the trolley passes through the upper part of the mark. When a laser scanner scans a front obstacle in real time, obstacle avoidance detection and obstacle avoidance are realized. A control box of the embedded system disclosed by the invention is as an inner kernel for image collection, image treatment and policy control, the acquired image is subjected to Gauss high-pass filtering, edge detection and two-step Hough transformation so that position deviation and angle deviation of the trolley relative to a current path can be calculated, and two-dimensional deviation value of the AGV currently corresponding to a location reference point is fed back at a station point.

A method and device for sharpening detected edges in an image to compensate for a corruption that occurs during the scanning and printing processes. Edges are enhanced by increasing the contrast between two sides of an edge region according to the amount of distortion in the image signal at that location. Each pixel in the image is analyzed in the context of neighboring pixels in the image to determine the presence of an edge and the degree of sharpening required. A filter is applied to adjust the intensity value of pixels in an edge region to correct for distortion and to emphasize the edge. The resulting final image contains sharpened edges with little effect on the smooth transition regions of the image.

The invention relates to the field of image processing and computer vision technologies, in particular to an extraction method for characters in a form document image. The extraction method includes a first step of extracting line segments in the image through edge detection and Hough transformation algorithm, a second step of estimating an inclined angle of the whole image according to direction distribution of the line segments and carrying out inclination correction on the image, a third step of connecting the line segments in the horizontal direction and the perpendicular direction, and locating table cells of a form, a fourth step of carrying out image binaryzation and segmenting a full line of characters in the table cells through a maximum between-cluster variance method, and extracting the characters in the table cells through a window sliding method, and a fifth step of carrying out restoration on deletion of strokes of the characters according to statistics features of frame lines of the table cells. The extraction method is good in flexibility and capable of effectively solving the problems of adhesion between the characters and overlap between the characters and form lines, and greatly reduces the influence of the adhesion and overlap on optical character recognition (OCR).

The invention discloses a gesture identification method and a gesture identification system, wherein the method comprises the following steps: step S1, a gesture detecting step: detecting a gesture in video stream in real time, marking a region in which the gesture is detected as an interested region; step S2, a gesture segmenting step: processing the interested region by utilizing skin color segmentation, and then performing edge detecting and outline extracting to obtain a point sequence of a hand-shaped outline; step S3, a gesture identifying step: firstly extracting a Fourier descriptor of the hand-shaped outline and then mapping the Fourier descriptor to a new vector of a characteristic space by utilizing PCA (principal components analysis), comparing the distance between the new vector and a gesture clustering center obtained by training, and judging a gesture type represented by the vector. The gesture identification method and the gesture identification system disclosed by the invention can improve the gesture identification accuracy and the gesture identification efficiency, and can effectively avoid background color interference.

In an image reproduction system, an image processor analyzes a hierarchy of image representations of different resolutions to detect edges. In regions having edges that are detected in all hierarchical representations, little or no filtering is applied to the image. In regions having no edges or edges that are detected in only the highest-resolution representation, greater amounts of filtering are applied to the image. In regions having edges detected in two or more but not all hierarchical representations, an intermediate amount of filtering is applied to the image. In preferred embodiments, two-dimensional averaging filters of varying size are applied to the image. The size of the averaging filter is selected according to the number of hierarchical representations in which an edge is detected.

An edge detecting circuit detects whether a particular pixel belongs to an edge by determining whether the differential value of the pixel from the neighboring pixel is equal to or greater than a threshold. Based on the detection result, an emphasis converter stops OS drive when the image of a pixel area is regarded as an edge image in accordance with the detected result of the edge detecting circuit and implements OS drive when the image of a pixel area is not regarded as an edge image. In this way, the edge detecting circuit detects edge portions of the input video, whereby OS drive in the emphasis converter can be controlled so as to be turned on and off.

The method of determining a focus measure from an image includes detecting one or more edges in the image by processing the image with one or more first order edge detection kernels adapted to reject edge phasing effects. A first measure of the strength of each of the edges, and the contrast of each of the edges may be determined. The method may include normalizing the first measure of the strength of each of the edges by the contrast of each of the edges to obtain a second measure of the strength of each of the edges, and resealing the second measure of the strength of each of the edges. The method may also include selecting one or more of the edges from the image in accordance with the second measure of their strengths, and calculating the focus measure from the second measure of the strengths of the selected edges.

For finding an inclination of an image rapidly and correctly, an image processing device includes a CCD picking up an image, an edge detection unit detecting an edge of an image relating to the picked-up image, a rotation unit rotating the detected edge in an image plane, an operation unit deriving a characteristic amount of rotated edge and an inclination detection unit detecting an inclination of the picked-up image based on the derived characteristic amount.

An edge adaptive system and method for image filtering. The method maps each output pixel onto input image coordinates and then prefilters and resamples the input image pixels around this point to reduce noise and adjust the scale corresponding to a particular operation. Then the edge in the input image is detected based on local and average signal variances in the input pixels. According to the edge detection parameters, including orientation, anisotropy and variance strength, the method determines a footprint and frequency response for the interpolation of the output pixel. In a more particular implementation, the method divides the input pixel space into a finite number of directions called skews, and estimates the edge orientation with the nearest skew direction. This further facilitates pixels inclusion in the interpolation of the output pixel.

A digital imaging device is provided with a touch sensitive display screen 10. The screen 10 displays an image 12 captured by the imaging device. Along one side of the screen is a toolbar 14 upon which is provided a plurality of individual icons 16. The icons 16 represent particular control functions that may be selected by a user. Examples of such control functions represented by the icons 16 include but are not limited to save, send, retrieve or discard image; rotate, reflect, crop, resize or edit image; compare images; process image (e.g. sharpen, blur, emboss, edge detect, pixelise, apply filter or similar); or vary image properties (e.g. brightness, colour balance, colour depth, contrast, convert to greyscale/black and white, effective surface temperature displayed (for infrared images) or similar). The user can select icons by touching the screen either directly or more preferably by tapping the screen with a suitable implement such as. a pen, a stylus or similar. Once a user has selected an icon, further icons may be displayed on the screen to allow the user to operate the selected function as desired.

The invention relates to a system and a method for prewarning lane deviation. The system comprises a pickup unit, a lane line identification unit, a deviation detection unit, and a prewarning unit which are electrically connected, wherein the pickup unit is used for receiving and transmitting a road condition signal; the lane line identification unit is connected with the pickup unit, receives the road condition signal and performs Hough conversion on the signals to identify the lane line; the deviation detection unit is connected with the lane line identification unit and calculates the distance between the identified lane line and a vehicle body, and sends a prewarning command when the distance is greater than a preset threshold value; and the prewarning unit is connected with the deviation detection unit, receives the prewarning command and sends the corresponding prewarning signal. The method comprises the following steps of: calibrating the pickup unit, setting an effective area, performing edge detection, finding the lane line to judge whether the lane line is deviated and sending the prewarning signal.

An imaging system for a vehicle is provided. The system includes an image sensor generating a plurality of image frames, and a controller coupled to the image sensor. The controller is programmed to detect an obstructed image frame from the plurality of image frames. The obstruction corresponds to a windshield wiper of the vehicle. In response to detecting an obstructed image, the controller optimizes the obstructed image for display or use by a vehicle system. The controller detects an obstructed image by at least one of object sensing confirmation, edge detection, negative shift detection or headlight illumination detection.