1951 results about "Image map" patented technology

An image guided navigation system for navigating a region of a patient includes an imaging device, a tracking device, a controller, and a display. The imaging device generates images of the region of a patient. The tracking device tracks the location of the instrument in a region of the patient. The controller superimposes an icon representative of the instrument onto the images generated from the imaging device based upon the location of the instrument. The display displays the image with the superimposed instrument. The images and a registration process may be synchronized to a physiological event. The controller may also provide and automatically identify an optimized site to navigate the instrument to.

A visual index method provides graphical output from search engine results or other URL lists. Search engine results or a list of URLs are passed to a web crawler that retrieves the web page and other media information present at the associated URL. The web crawler then passes this information to a page renderer which also receives image scale and format information regarding the web pages present at the URLs. The graphical information as well as other media information is then rendered into a reduced graphical form so that the page may be summarily reviewed by the user. Media, visual, or other information may also be downwardly scaled as appropriate or rendered in its original as appropriate (such as with audio data streams). A variety of convenient formats allows the user to quickly and readily scan the presentation at the URL web pages or other data present. Image maps associated with the reduced images may also provide hyperlink access to the linked web page and / or multimedia allowing the links present on the web page in its original to be accessed through the reduced image provided by the web page renderer.

A system for use during a medical or surgical procedure on a body. The system generates an image representing the position of one or more body elements during the procedure using scans generated by a scanner prior or during the procedure. The image data set has reference points for each of the body elements, the reference points of a particular body element having a fixed spatial relation to the particular body element. The system includes an apparatus for identifying, during the procedure, the relative position of each of the reference points of each of the body elements to be displayed. The system also includes a processor for modifying the image data set according to the identified relative position of each of the reference points during the procedure, as identified by the identifying apparatus, said processor generating a displaced image data set representing the position of the body elements during the procedure. The system also includes a display utilizing the displaced image data set generated by the processor, illustrating the relative position of the body elements during the procedure. Methods relating to the system are also disclosed. Also disclosed are devices for use with a surgical navigation system having a sensor array which is in communication with the device to identify its position. The device may be a reference frame for attachment of a body part of the patient, such as a cranial reference arc frame for attachment to the head or a spine reference arc frame for attachment to the spine. The device may also be a localization frame for positioning an instrument relative to a body part, such as a localization biopsy guide frame for positioning a biopsy needle, a localization drill guide assembly for positioning a drill bit, a localization drill yoke assembly for positioning a drill, or a ventriculostomy probe for positioning a catheter.

A method for detecting direction when interfacing with a computer program is provided. The method includes capturing an image presented in front of an image capture device. The image capture device has a capture location in a coordinate space. When a person is captured in the image, the method includes identifying a human head in the image and assigning the human head a head location in the coordinate space. The method also includes identifying an object held by the person in the image and assigning the object an object location in coordinate space. The method further includes identifying a relative position in coordinate space between the head location and the object location when viewed from the capture location. The relative position defines a pointing direction of the object when viewed by the image capture device. The method may be practiced on a computer system, such as one used in the gaming field.

A method and medium for a computer readable input area. The input area is created by a computer program on a display capable of receiving touch-screen input. The computer on which the input area in used is at least a 32-bit system. The input area may contain a keyboard which is an image map. External programming may selectively access the input area through a dynamic link library. The input area has no task bar and may not be minimized, maximized, or deleted. Therefore, the input area becomes an integral component and provides the user with a constant and reliable method of inputting information into the computer program.

A system having a client, a host server, a sponsor server, and a video server, which are all interconnected via the Internet and which operate seamlessly together in order to provide video content to an end user at the client and allow the end user at the client to purchase products and / or services from the sponsor that are featured in the video content provided by the video server. As the user views video content on his or her computer, images associated with segments of the content are periodically provided in conjunction with the video content. Each image contains an image map, which defines areas in the image. Each defined area is associated with a product which is displayed in that area of the image. Each defined area is also associated with an anchored hyperlink which links to web content from a sponsor server. The web content includes product information for that particular product featured in that area of the image. Accordingly, by selecting an item in the image, product information is retrieved from a sponsor server and provided to the user so he or she may purchase the product seen in the video content.Additionally, various user activities and interactions, including which videos are selected for viewing and which products are purchased, is tracked for several purposes. This tracking can be used to determine which videos and products are viewed and purchased more often, as well as for generating revenue sharing reports for purposes of profit sharing.

A feedback mechanism usable with graphical user interface systems that do not have a cursor improves the usefulness of such graphical user interfaces. Locating, identifying and / or selecting hyperlink targets or active areas within a displayed image map or within a Web page is facilitated by providing distinctions to the hyperlink targets or active areas or by providing other locational indicators for a designated time period in response to a single user gesture. The distinctions or locational indicators may be provided in combination with other distinctions or locational indicators to further aid the hyperlink target or active area location, identification and / or selection process. After a designated time period expires, the distinctions, locational indicators, or their combination, are removed from the display without any additional user gesture. This increases the efficiency and convenience of locating, identifying and / or selecting hyperlink targets or active areas in a graphical user interface system.

An image processing apparatus and method, which can appropriately extract an object even when the focus of a camera having an automatic focus adjustment function shifts from the background to the object. To this end, frame images which are sensed by an image sensing unit and are sequential in the time axis direction are input from an input unit. The input frame images are smoothed by a filter unit. A background image generation unit generates an average image of a predetermined number of smoothed frame images as a background image. An image differential unit generates a differential image between the predetermined smoothed frame image and the background image. An object extraction unit extracts an object region where a predetermined object is sensed, on the basis of the differential image.

An image processing apparatus comprises: an image acquisition unit for acquiring a plurality of original images acquired by imaging a specimen including a structure in various focal positions using a microscope apparatus; an image generation unit for generating, on the basis of the plurality of original images, a first image on which blurring of an image of the structure has been reduced in comparison with the original images; and an analysis unit for obtaining information relating to the structure included in the first image by applying image analysis processing to the first image. The image generation unit selects a part of the original images having focal positions included within a smaller depth range than a thickness of the specimen from the plurality of original images obtained from the specimen, and generates the first image using the selected original images.

A panoramic annular lens system (PAL), a unitary video camera and a PC-based software system that unwraps a 360° video image into a seamless, distortion free horizontal image image in real time. The PAL system of the preferred embodiment has a 360° horizontal field of view and a 90° vertical field of view in a 40 mm diameter compact package. The invention is not limited to any particular type of lens system. In fact, there are numerous lens systems for providing a 360° panoramic view. The video camera may be a CCD or CMOS based device having a pixel resolution of either 1280×1024 (high resolution) or 720×480 (NTSC). The unwrapping system is a radiometric ray tracing program carried out using a computer's graphics card capabilities to produce highly efficient regional transformation while minimizing software overhead. The result is real time, high resolution 30 fps conversion from a spherical distorted image to a flat panoramic image in Cartesian coordinates.

An enterprise based workflow server based system to detect and classify images as potentially of pornographic nature. The system is based on two independent stages. The first stage is an automatic stage which eliminates most images that are positively non pornographic, including an image analysis engine with a plurality of sub engines, each dedicated to different attributes of an image. The second stage describes an additional embodiment of a manual review stage. An alternative embodiment describes a similar server solution to detect images suspected as copyrighted material. The images can be individually classified, or analyzed as a cluster or a collection of images such as an album or motion-picture segment, sampled into key still frames. The system optimizes time saving by elimination of images, and assures accuracy by generating a workflow reviewing solution which can involve a human decision-making stage.

A method and system for associating active regions with positions within displayed images in a device and display independent manner. Active regions are described by client-side image maps include in hyper-text markup language descriptions of web pages that include specifications of images to be displayed within the web pages. The specifications of images and descriptions of client-side image maps are replaced by servers with a parameterized call to an image viewer, invoked by a browser on a client computer to display the image. The browser maintains an internal description of the positions of active regions in image-relative coordinates, thereby providing dynamic viewing of web pages that include images with associated active regions while maintaining the originally-defined correspondence between the active regions and images.

Content-targeted ads are served with e-mail messages, such as HTML e-mail messages by (i) having the document publisher include a unique content identifier in the content, (ii) having a client device pass the unique content identifier to a content-relevant ad server in a content-relevant ad request, and (iii) having the content-relevant ad server use the unique contend identifier to identify previously registered content for purposes of determining content-relevant ads. In the content-relevant ad server, multiple ads may compete for desired ad attributes (e.g., relative position on a page) or features. An arbitration process may be used to chose and / or order the ads. By having the client device pass the unique content identifier to the content-relevant ad server when it needs the ads, ads can be chosen and generated all at the time the user reads (or more generally “opens”) the e-mail document. This permits up-to-date ad information to be used when serving ads. User actions with respect to served ads may be tracked by (i) using an ad image to display ads in the document, and (ii) using an image map (included in the document originally served) to monitor user behavior with respect to an ad served in a document. All the information about the ad impression may be encoded in a unique identifier, which is returned, along with the ad image. The ad image and unique identifier may be provided to a client device. When a user selects an ad, this unique identifier may be returned to the ad server. A position of an image map clicked may also be returned to the ad server. The returned unique identifier and image position may be used to allow the ad server to determine which ad was selected. Thus, the unique identifier permits a selection to be matched with a previous ad serve.

Methods and systems for interfacing a computer system are provided, which include capturing three-dimensional image maps over time of at least a part of a control element such as the body of a human subject, generating a three-dimensional representation of scene elements by driving a three-dimensional display with a second sequence of three-dimensional maps of scene elements. The two sequences of maps are correlated to detect a direction and speed of movement of the part of the body with respect to the scene elements. A relationship of the direction and speed of movement to at least one of the scene elements is established. A computer application is controlled according to the relationship that is established.

A system, method, and computer program product for classifying a target structure in an image into abnormality types. The system has a scanning mechanism that scans a local window across sub-regions of the target structure by moving the local window across the image to obtain sub-region pixel sets. A mechanism inputs the sub-region pixel sets into a classifier to provide output pixel values based on the sub-region pixel sets, each output pixel value representing a likelihood that respective image pixels have a predetermined abnormality, the output pixel values collectively determining a likelihood distribution output image map. A mechanism scores the likelihood distribution map to classify the target structure into abnormality types. The classifier can be, e.g., a single-output or multiple-output massive training artificial neural network (MTANN).

The Evidentiary Imaging System (EIS) provides secure storage or transmission of a digital image into which is encoded the date, time, and location at which the image was taken, along with the camera ID and frame number. The encoding is dispersed throughout the image so that the image cannot be modified without distorting the encoding. The image may be encrypted for additional security. Annotation can be superimposed on the encoded or encoded and encrypted image to classify or identify the image to human or automated scanning systems. The annotation can also be used to key the decoding and decryption tasks. The EIS produces imagery which may be authenticated as to originality, time and location of imaging. The imagery may be stored, duplicated, and transmitted while retaining its authenticity. However, any modifications to the image, including any local changes, are readily detected because the encoding will not decode correctly. The EIS is designed to provide imagery which may be used for evidentiary proof of authenticity, ownership, originality, date and time, and location of imaged events. Certain users of EIS systems, such as police forensics labs, may have a central depository for the decoding and decryption keys used with their cameras. Other users may rely upon authentication services provided by the EIS manufacturer or an independent expert in the EIS technique. While many different schemes for encoding and encryption may be used, FlashCorrelation(R) provides a computationally simple and rapid method for encoding each item of information; allowing for separate or total encoding and readout of encoding layers representing: date, time, location, camera ID, and frame number. As covered in the issued FlashCorrelation(R) U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,583,950 and 5,982,932, readout and authentication can be done by one party authorized to have the decoding and decryption schemes, or readout and authentication may require two or more parties.

A local user obtains data on the response of internal tissues of a subject to a non-invasive imaging system, choosing sensor positions according to a geometric display. The data obtained are evaluated with respect to predefined quantitative values. The process of obtaining and processing the internal tissue response data is repeated until an image meeting predetermined image quality characteristics is obtained. Specific or general content of the image may be restricted by the local processor, with a distal processor receiving the obtained image data, so as to limit specific or general types of image information from being viewed by the local user, such as image data that can be used to identify the sex of a fetus within the subject.

An advertising system provides content relevant advertisements to a client system for rendering in association with an instance of distributed content. The advertising system comprises a web server receiving content requests and redirect requests from the client system. Each content request includes: i) a unique identifier distinguishing the instance of distributed content from other instances of distributed content; ii) a template identifier identifying predetermined image map attributes of a predetermined image map defined within the distributed content; and ii) a search parameter. An advertisement content rendering object receives each content request and in response thereto, returns a rendering of each of a plurality of instances of advertising content in accordance the image map attributes associated with the template identifier. A redirect database maintains, in association with the unique identifier, redirect data and a financial parameter associated with each instance of advertising content. Each redirect request comprises: i) the unique identifier distinguishing the instance of distributed content from other instances of distributed content; and ii) an identification of a zone of an image map defined within the distributed content that is selected by a user. A redirect object receives each redirect request and in response thereto: i) looks up the redirect data associated with both the unique identifier and the identified zone of the image map; and ii) directs the client system to a URL associated with the redirect data.

A system and method for automatically registering a three dimensional (3D) pre-operative image of an anatomical structure with intra-operative electrophysiological (EP) points of a 3D electro-anatomical (EA) image map of the anatomical structure is disclosed. The pre-operative image is displayed in a first supporting view. The intra-operative EA image map is displayed in a second supporting view. An alignment of the pre-operative image with the intra-operative map is performed by identifying at least one corresponding point on each image. The view of the pre-operative image is integrated with the EA map based on the alignment.

The invention discloses a visibility detecting method based on road condition monitoring video, which utilizes a camera at the outfield road of highway to carry out video collecting of multiple angles and positions; 10 to 30 frames of images are continuously captured when collecting video images; automatic calibration of the images observing from a target object and pretreatment: the collected video images are carried out automatic switching from an image plane to a world coordinate, 4 to 8 groups of pseudo-range information targets are extracted and separated, and whether the images satisfy features is judged; the visibility detecting method based on road condition monitoring video is adopted to carry out visibility detection on the road condition images by analyzing road condition; the visibility of obtained 15 to 30 frames of images is carried out visibility distance equalization treatment so as to obtain the current visibility value; and a mapping relation from an image coordinate to a road coordinate is established, the image distance information is transformed into road distance information, and then the visibility detection and analysis conforming to human eyes are carried out so as to obtain the visibility value.

An image selection method includes receiving a collection of images and optionally, filtering the collection of images. The filtering may include removing images that are near-duplicates of other images in the collection. A plurality of features is extracted from each of the images in the optionally-filtered collection. The optionally-filtered collection of images is considered as a time-ordered sequence of images and is segmented to form a sequence of segments. Each segment includes at least one of the images. The segmenting of the sequence of images is based on the extracted features and positions of the images in the sequence of images. Images from the segments are selected to form a sub-collection of the images.

A technique for combining user selectable product images and facilitating visualization-assisted coordinated product acquisition. One or more products having one or more associated product images may be identified. The one or more product images may be image processed by incorporating the image(s) into an anchor image to generate a composite anchor image that depicts the one or more products according to an intended manner of use thereof. The image processing may include using product dimension information to scale the one or more product images as necessary to match a scale of the anchor image. The composite anchor image may be caused to be displayed in association with one or more user interface elements, the user interface elements being operable to initiate a coordinated product transaction involving the one or more products. Responsive to the one or more user interface elements being activated, the coordinated product transaction may be initiated.

The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for creating a 3D image of vehicle surroundings. The method according to the present invention includes the steps of: mapping images captured by a plurality of cameras installed in a vehicle to a virtual plane defined by a 3-dimensional space model having a container shape with a flat bottom surface and a top surface which has an increasing radius; and creating a view image having a viewpoint of a virtual camera by using the image mapped to the virtual plane. According to the present invention, it is advantageous that an image of vehicle surroundings including surrounding obstacles can be expressed naturally and three-dimensionally. It is also advantageous that an optimal image of vehicle surroundings can be provided by changing the virtual viewpoint according to a traveling state of the vehicle. There is also the advantage that a user can conveniently adjust the viewpoint of the virtual camera.

An image processing apparatus of the invention generates one still image having a high pixel density from multiple images. The image processing apparatus includes: an image extraction module that extracts the multiple images used for generation of the one still image; a deviation computation module that computes a degree of deviation between each combination of the extracted multiple images; an exclusion module that excludes any image having the computed degree of deviation out of a preset threshold range from the extracted multiple images; and an image composition module that combines remaining images other than the excluded image to generate the one still image. This arrangement of the invention ensures efficient image processing to generate one high-resolution still image from multiple images.

The invention features a method wherein a recognition environment utilizes pseudo-English as a programming language to extract simple and complex objects with image-and / or map-data as inputs. Based on this human / computer interface in which pseudo-English is a programming language, the object-recognition system has three major logic modules: (1) an input data module; (2) an information-processing module, coupled with the above-noted human computer interface (HCI) module; and (3) an output module that has a feedback mechanism back to the main information-processing and the input-data module. A physical phenomenon (i.e., one that is visible, audible, tactile, etc.) is analyzed by the information-processing module to determine whether it is susceptible to description or articulation. If not, the phenomenon is matched or compared, via the output module, to a known articulatable, physical-phenomenon model and recognizable features are extracted.

The invention relates to a face image gender recognition method based on stack type sparse self-coding, and belongs to the field of image recognition, machine learning, and computer vision. A training process of the method includes image graying, histogram equalization, geometric correction, image normalization, the training of a sparse self-coding model, logic regression classifier training, a fine tuning model, and model fusion of face standard databases FERET and CAS-PEAL-R1, and a prediction process comprises the capturing of natural scene images by a camera, image graying, histogram equalization, face detection, geometric correction, image normalization, the prediction by employing a stack type sparse self-coding model, and result marking. According to the method, the problem of face gender recognition is solved by employing the stack type sparse self-coding model, combination characteristics of the images can be learned layer by layer, original signals can be better represented in an abstract manner, characteristics extracted by a hiding unit are further adjusted by the adoption of fine tuning, and the recognition accuracy is higher.

A method and computer software immersive interface for networked computers that utilize a pointing device (mouse, trackball, touchscreen, tablet, etc) and are connected by networks which allows intuitive and rapid navigation and access to programs, data, and any digital media such as images, pictures, photographs, audio, video, and models through a robust-feedback, highly interactive multimedia interface that is designed to appear and sound like a pseudo-physical virtual or real-life scene which is self-explaining and easily recognizable to the user. Interaction Elements within this scene take advantage of a pre-existing connotation to the user so that the functionality of each element can be quickly and easily recognized and manipulated. These Interaction Elements within the scene have multiple states, depending upon user input, and provide three types of robust multimedia functionality feedback to the user in response to every pertinent user activity. The robust feedback includes at least two of visual imagery feedback, visual textual feedback, and audio feedback.