Digital Infrared Correction for Uniform Image Brightness
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Solution Overview
Problem
Infrared rays significantly impact image quality by causing uneven brightness and color in photographs, with existing solutions like light filters only partially addressing the issue and often resulting in excessive brown or green tinting.
Innovation Solution
An image processing method that involves obtaining ambient infrared intensity data and using a correspondence table to select appropriate infrared image data for correction, allowing for the subtraction of infrared effects from original image data to produce a uniformly bright and balanced image.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Object-affected harmful factors
If a light filter (infrared filter or blue glass) is mounted onto a lens to reduce infrared ray impact, then the infrared ray impact on the image is reduced to some extent, but multiple times of reflection of infrared ray between the light filter and lens group cause the final image quality to be affected, resulting in excessively brown or green color and non-uniform color distribution
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts and removes the infrared ray component from the captured image through digital image processing. By identifying and subtracting the infrared contribution from the original image, the method eliminates the harmful infrared effect without introducing the reflection artifacts that occur with physical light filters.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent replaces the mechanical/optical light filter system with a digital image processing system. Instead of using physical filters that cause multiple reflections and color distortion, the invention uses computational methods to remove infrared effects, thereby substituting a mechanical solution with a digital one that avoids the associated drawbacks.
2Ease of operation
If no light filter is used to capture the image, then the image capture process is simple, but the infrared ray impact causes the middle of the image to be bright and surroundings to be dark, resulting in non-uniform brightness
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces potential mechanical brightness correction methods with digital image processing. By computationally analyzing and adjusting the image data based on infrared intensity distribution, the method achieves brightness uniformity without adding complex optical components or mechanical adjustment mechanisms.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary processing step that analyzes the relationship between captured image data and infrared intensity data. This intermediary analysis enables the system to selectively correct brightness non-uniformity caused by infrared rays while preserving the simplicity of the original image capture process.
3Object-affected harmful factors
If a light filter is mounted to block infrared rays, then infrared impact is reduced, but the color of the image becomes excessively brown or green and non-uniform
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts and removes only the infrared ray component from the image data through digital processing, rather than using a physical filter that blocks all wavelengths. By selectively removing the infrared contribution, the method preserves color uniformity while eliminating infrared effects.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent replaces the mechanical light filter system with a digital image processing system that can precisely control which wavelength components are removed. This substitution allows for selective infrared removal without the color distortion and non-uniformity caused by physical filters.
Data Source
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AI summary
Embodiments of the present invention disclose an image processing method, including: obtaining image data of a photographed original image, and obtaining ambient infrared intensity I that is used when the original image is photographed; obtaining infrared image data corresponding to I according to a preset correspondence between tested infrared intensity and infrared image data; obtaining corrected image data according to the image data of the original image and the infrared image data corresponding to I; and obtaining a corresponding corrected image according to the corrected image data, and outputting the corrected image. According to the image processing method provided in the embodiments of the present invention, impact of an infrared ray on image quality may be reduced by means of image processing, so as to obtain an image with uniform brightness.