351 results about "Short exposure" patented technology

An image pickup apparatus capable of performing dynamic assignment of an output image in a dynamic range according to a subject.

The image pickup apparatus includes an image pickup device (131) for picking up an image of a subject, a signal processing section (133) for generating a composite image having a relatively wider dynamic range than at least either of the dynamic ranges of a long-time exposure image picked up with a relatively long exposure time by the image pickup device and a short-time exposure image picked up with a relatively short exposure time by the image pickup device, by synthesizing the long-time exposure image and the short-time exposure image, and a control section (137) for compressing the composite image and dynamically varies the assignment proportion of a high luminance dynamic range to a low-middle luminance dynamic range in a dynamic range of an output image to be outputted as a video signal.

An image sensor has at least two photodiodes in each unit pixel. A high dynamic range is achieved by selecting different exposure times for the photodiodes. Additionally, blooming is reduced. The readout timing cycle is chosen so that the short exposure time photodiodes act as drains for excess charge overflowing from the long exposure time photodiodes. To improve draining of excess charge, the arrangement of photodiodes may be further selected so that long exposure time photodiodes are neighbored along vertical and horizontal directions by short exposure time photodiodes. A micro-lens array may also be provided in which light is preferentially coupled to the long exposure time photodiodes to improve sensitivity.

Long and short exposure time pixel information are input to pixel information. A long exposure time image set with the pixel values assuming all of the pixels have been exposed for a long time and a short exposure time image set with the pixel values assuming all of the pixels have been exposed for a short time are generated. A point spread function corresponding to the long exposure time image is computed as a long exposure time image PSF. A corrected image is generated using the short exposure time image, the long exposure time image, and the long exposure time image PSF. The corrected image is generated as a wide dynamic range image utilizing the pixel information for the long and short exposure time image. Utilizing the pixel information for the short exposure time image with little blurring, makes the corrected image a high quality corrected image with little blurring.

A device and method for operating an in vivo imaging device (10A) wherein the illumination produced by the device may be varied in intensity and/or duration, and/or the gain level or other parameters may be varied, according to, for example, the amount of illumination produced by the device which is reflected back to the device. In addition, a method is provided for detecting problematic pixels in an imaging device. This method may define and exclude non-functional pixels, based on for example an initial short exposure that enables a threshold saturation level to be reached only for problematic pixels. Moreover, a method is described for determining when an in vivo device enters the body, for example by calculating the progress of a dark frame, based on the light saturation threshold of the dark frame.

A method of generating a high dynamic range (HDR) image is provided that includes capturing a long exposure image and a short exposure image of a scene, computing a merging weight for each pixel location of the long exposure image based on a pixel value of the pixel location and a saturation threshold, and computing a pixel value for each pixel location of the HDR image as a weighted sum of corresponding pixel values in the long exposure image and the short exposure image, wherein a weight applied to a pixel value of the pixel location of the short exposure image and a weight applied to a pixel value of the pixel location in the pixel long exposure image are determined based on the merging weight computed for the pixel location and responsive to motion in a scene of the long exposure image and the short exposure image.

An imaging control apparatus includes an HDR signal processor and a frame memory. The HDR signal processor obtains pixel data S1 and S2 obtained by imaging with a very short exposure time T1 and a short exposure time T2 earlier than obtaining pixel data S3 obtained by imaging with a normal exposure time T3, generates a luminance image data by separating illumination light component from the pixel data S1 and S2, the generation of the luminance image data starting when the pixel data S2 is obtained, and generates a gain for tone mapping from the luminance image data. On the other hand, the HDR signal processor generates an HDR image data from the pixel data S1 to S3, the generation of the HDR image starting when the pixel data S3 is obtained, and performs tone mapping by multiplying this image data by the gain.

An image sensor, system and method that alternates sub-sets of pixels with long exposure times and pixels with short exposure times on the same sensor to provide a sensor having improved Wide Dynamic Range (WDR). The sub-sets of pixels are reset at different time intervals after being read, which causes the respective integration times to vary. By combining information contained in the both the short and long integration pixels, the dynamic range of the sensor is improved.

An image pickup device includes an image pickup section that picks up a long-time exposure image and short-time exposure image; a combining section that combines the long-time exposure image and short-time exposure image with each other, to generate a combined image, the exposure images being combined on the basis of a ratio between the exposure time of the long-time exposure image and the exposure time of the short-time exposure image; a dynamic range calculating section that calculates an object dynamic range from the long-time exposure image, the exposure time of the long-time exposure image, the short-time exposure image, and the exposure time of the short-time exposure image; and a compressing section that, using base compression curve data, calculates a compression curve suitable for the object dynamic range, and generates a compressed image in accordance with the calculated compression curve.

PCT No. PCT/US95/01201 Sec. 371 Date Jul. 30, 1997 Sec. 102(e) Date Jul. 30, 1997 PCT Filed Jan. 30, 1995 PCT Pub. No. WO96/24032 PCT Pub. Date Aug. 8, 1996An imaging system for measuring the field variance of distorted light waves collects a set of short exposure "distorted" images of an object, and applies a field variant data processing methodology in the digital domain, resulting in an image estimate which approaches the diffraction limited resolution of the underlying physical imaging system as if the distorting mechanism were not present. By explicitly quantifying and compensating for the field variance of the distorting media, arbitrarily wide fields can be imaged, well beyond the prior art limits imposed by isoplanatism. The preferred embodiment comprehensively eliminates the blurring effects of the atmosphere for ground based telescopes, removing a serious limitation that has plagued the use of telescopes since the time of Newton.

Provided is an image generation system and method, more particularly, an image generation system and method which can generate a high dynamic range image from a plurality of images acquired in a single short exposure. The image generation system To includes an image generation system having an image acquisition unit to acquire an image, an image generation unit to generate, from the acquired image, a plurality of images with different resolution and brightness, and an image synthesis unit to synthesize the generated images.

An apparatus and image reconstruction method for use in an apparatus including a digital camera are provided. The apparatus and method include driving an image sensor during a short exposure time in an image reconstruction mode, driving the image sensor during a relatively-long exposure time in the image reconstruction mode, and acquiring first and second frame images having different illumination degrees; assigning substantially identical image data of the first and second frame images to local images each having a predetermined size; calculating local variance values of image data of each of the local areas; comparing a local variance value of the first frame image with a local variance value of the second frame images, assigning a high weight to one local image having a high local variance value, and assigning a low weight to the other local image having a low local variance value; applying the determined weights to image data of individual local areas of the first and second frame images, performing image reconstruction, and displaying a reconstructed image.

In an apparatus according to one embodiment of the present invention, a video system is disclosed. The video system comprises a pre-processing module, an auto-exposure module, and an image sensor. The image sensor is operable to simultaneously capture a first image at a long exposure and a second image at a short exposure capture. The auto-exposure module is operable to determine an average brightness of a scene for video/image capturing, wherein the determined brightness achieves a desired image quality. The auto-exposure module is further operable to select a dynamic range necessary to preserve desired details in a captured scene. The auto-exposure module is further operable to instruct the image sensor to capture the first image and the second image with a selected exposure ratio to achieve the desired dynamic range. The pre-processing module is operable to combine the first image and the second image into a final image with the desired dynamic range.

An electronic image stabilizer in a digital camera compensates for camera motion-induced blurriness by segmenting exposure times into multiple shorter exposure times and summing the individual pixels from successive frames after applying an appropriate motion correction. Motion is detected by computing the correlation function between successive images, and compensation is applied by maximizing the correlation function. This avoids the need for mechanical stabilization devices in order to detect or correct the motion as is done in prior art. This method further enables the detection of moving objects in a still background, and correction of blurriness images due to such motion.

A digital camera takes interleaved photographs of two different kinds. In one example embodiment, the first kind of photograph is taken using a first set of pixels of the camera's electronic array light sensor and has a short exposure time. The second kind of photograph is taken using a second set of pixels and has a long exposure time. More than one of the short-exposure-time photographs is taken while each long-exposure-time photograph is exposed. The two kinds of photographs are used for different purposes. For example, one kind may be used for performing automatic focusing while the other kind is used for displaying in a live view display. In this way, live view may continue while automatic focusing is performed. In another embodiment, one kind of photograph is used for providing a live view display, and the other is used in selecting exposure settings for a final photograph.

A self-powered integral in-core instrument thimble assembly for monitoring the temperature and radiation levels surrounding a nuclear fuel assembly, that transmits output signals wirelessly to a remote location. The in-core instrument thimble assembly is activated by a short exposure within a reactor core and remains active after the fuel assembly is removed from the reactor core to continuously provide a remote monitoring capability for the fuel assembly as it is transported or stored at a remote location, without an external power source.

In one embodiment the present invention relates to a method for structuring a transaction involving a first party having a long position in a security and a second party desiring to acquire short exposure to the security. In one example an agent or intermediary acts between the first party and the second party. In another example the first party and the second party deal directly with one another.

A solid-state image sensor which includes a pixel section, AD converter, line memory, controller and synthesizer is disclosed. The line memory stores a digital signal output from the AD converter. The controller controls the pixel section and AD converter to subject analog signals of different exposure times to an AD converting process by use of the AD converter and transfer the thus AD-converted signals to the line memory in an accumulation period of charges of one frame. The synthesizer is supplied with digital signals of different exposure times from the line memory, compare a fist signal obtained by adding signals of short and long exposure times with a second signal obtained by amplifying the signal of short exposure time by the ratio of the signal of short exposure time to the signal of long exposure time, select a larger one of the compared signals and output the selected signal.

An imaging device and its image processing for creating an image with less blur from a small number of images under different exposure conditions in a shortened processing time. The imaging device 10 captures an image by means of an optical system 11 and an imaging element 12 in a short exposure time with a high resolution and much noise and images in a long exposure time with low resolution and less noise. After signal processing by signal processing section 13, a CPU 14 detects the position variation between captured images and blurs, separates the edges blur and the noise by using the threshold from the two difference images, combines the two images at a varied combination ratio, and thereby creates an image with no blur and reduced noise.

An imaging apparatus and an imaging method able to obtain images having no blurring with a small number of images under different exposure conditions and capable of shortening a processing time, wherein an imaging apparatus 10 captures a plurality of images including an image having a short exposure time and high resolution, but having much noise and an image having a long exposure time, but having little noise and low resolution by an optical system 11 and an imaging element 12. After the signal processing of a signal processing part 13, a CPU 14 detects positional deviation among the captured images and blurring, changes the ratio of the plurality of images according to the distances from the edge, and combines these to thereby form an image free from blurring and reducing noise.

The present disclosure relates to training and utilizing an image exposure transformation network to generate a long-exposure image from a single short-exposure image (e.g., still image). In various embodiments, the image exposure transformation network is trained using adversarial learning, long-exposure ground truth images, and a multi-term loss function. In some embodiments, the image exposure transformation network includes an optical flow prediction network and/or an appearance guided attention network. Trained embodiments of the image exposure transformation network generate realistic long-exposure images from single short-exposure images without additional information.

A device and method are provided to generate an image with a wide dynamic range, based on one photographed image. An exposure time control is executed in which different exposure times are set in units of rows of a pixel portion, in units of pixel regions, or similar, and different, multiple pixel information which are the pixel values of the pixels set with different exposures are obtained. For example, high sensitivity pixel information is obtained from long exposure pixels, low sensitivity information is obtained from short exposure pixels, and a pixel value for the output image is calculated based on the pixel information with these different sensitivities. For example, for high luminosity regions, the sensitivity pixel information may have a saturated value, and so a large weight is set to the low sensitivity pixel information, also for low luminosity regions, the SN ratio of low sensitivity pixel information is estimated to be poor, and so a large weight is set to the high sensitivity pixel information to determine the output pixel value.

The invention discloses a wide dynamic processing method for a single-frame double-exposure image. The single-frame double-exposure image is a 12-bit original image comprising long exposure pixel blocks and short exposure pixel blocks simultaneously, and the method comprises the following steps of: (1) performing interpolation calculation, namely completing values of three channels of red, green and blue (RGB) for each pixel; (2) performing wide dynamic mapping, namely mapping and compressing the interpolated image; (3) segmenting image subjected to wide dynamic mapping to obtain two images only with the long exposure pixels and the short exposure pixels respectively; and (4) combining the two images by using a brightness distribution histogram interval segmenting method. Through the wide dynamic processing method for the single-frame double-exposure image, the pixels in two exposure modes in the single-frame image are combined, so that each part is subjected to proper exposure. Moreover, the single-frame image is only needed to be processed, the calculated quantity is reduced, and the wide dynamic image quality is improved through detection and correction of dead pixels and correction of the image.

A short-time exposure image data and a long-time exposure image data of the same object to be photographed are stored to SE memory and LE memory and then transferred to CPU, motion thereof being detected at a motion detecting section on the basis of the two image data; if no motion is detected, a wide dynamic range, synthesized image as synthesized at a synthesizing circuit on the basis of image data read out from the two memories and compressed is outputted through a selector controlled by CPU. If a motion is detected, the long-time exposure image data read out from the LE memory and processed at a signal processing circuit is outputted through the selector. An image pickup apparatus having a function for generating wide dynamic range, synthesized image by synthesizing image signals corresponding to a plurality of frames of different exposure amounts is thereby able to perform ON/OFF switching of the generating function of synthesized image on the basis of previously taken image data, so that a failed synthesized image can be prevented from being outputted.

A system and process for converting a series of short-exposure, small-FOV zoom images to pristine, high-resolution images, of a face, license plate, or other targets of interest, within a fraction of a second. The invention takes advantage or the fact that some regions in a telescope field of view can be super-resolved; that is, features will appear in random regions which have resolution better than the diffraction limit of the telescope. This effect arises because the turbulent layer in the near-field of the object can act as a lens, focusing rays ordinarily outside the diffraction-limited cone into the distorted image. The physical effect often appears as magnified sub-regions of the image, as if one had held up a magnifying glass to a portion of the image. Applicants have experimentally shown these effects on short-range anisoplanatic imagery, along a horizontal path over the desert. In addition, they have developed powerful parallel processing software to overcome the warping and produce sharp images.

An apparatus and a method for calculating a flicker-evaluation value through a wide dynamic range (WDR) system. The apparatus includes: a first calculator configured to calculate a first difference between a pixel value of a long exposure image of a current frame and a pixel value of a long exposure image of a previous frame; an average calculator configured to calculate an average of the pixel value of the long exposure image of the current frame and the pixel value of the long exposure image of the previous frame; a second calculator configured to calculate a second difference between a pixel value of a short exposure image of the current frame and the average calculated by the average calculator; and a flicker-evaluation value calculator configured to calculate a flicker-evaluation value which indicates a flicker strength using the first difference and the second difference.