Dynamic Image Tiling for Zoom and Pan Interface
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Solution Overview
Problem
The existing infrastructure for digital image transmission over the Internet is inefficient in dynamically creating, manipulating, and transferring images on demand, requiring significant resources and human development time due to limitations in image processing speed, storage, and data transfer rates, which hinders personalized and interactive digital image displays in e-commerce applications.
Innovation Solution
A system and method that incorporates a zoom and pan (ZAP) feature, allowing users to dynamically generate and interact with images by zooming in and out, panning, and tracking user interactions, combined with dynamic imaging features like hotspots, to provide detailed views and record user interest areas, utilizing a dynamic imaging server for real-time image processing and auto-tiling to manage image resolution.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If digital images are dynamically created and manipulated on demand, then user interaction and customization are improved, but resource requirements and processing complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the digital image into multiple tiles at different resolutions. When a user zooms or pans, the system only processes and transmits the specific tiles needed for the current view rather than the entire high-resolution image, reducing processing complexity while maintaining user interaction capabilities.
Solution Approach 2:
The system pre-generates multiple resolution versions of image tiles and stores them in advance. This preliminary action allows the server to quickly serve pre-processed tiles when users interact with the image, avoiding real-time processing complexity while enabling dynamic zoom and pan operations.
2Manufacturing precision
If high resolution digital images are transmitted over the Internet, then image quality is improved, but data transfer time and network bandwidth requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent divides the high-resolution image into smaller tile segments. Users can view the full-resolution image by loading only the necessary tiles in sequence or parallel, significantly reducing the data transfer time compared to transmitting the entire high-resolution image at once, while maintaining image quality.
Solution Approach 2:
The system transmits only the portion of the image that is currently visible or likely to be viewed (partial action), rather than the entire high-resolution image. This reduces data transfer time while maintaining perceived image quality for the user's current view.
3Ease of operation
If multiple resolution versions of images are maintained, then zoom and pan operations are improved, but storage requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
Instead of storing multiple complete high-resolution images for different zoom levels, the patent segments each image into tiles and creates multiple resolution versions of only those tiles. This segmentation approach significantly reduces storage requirements while maintaining smooth zoom and pan operations, as only the necessary tile portions are stored at multiple resolutions.
Data Source
AI summary
A system and method is provided that generates and transmits images over a communication network to an end user. The system and method includes a zoom and pan (ZAP) feature that offers a user the ability to see all available detail of a displayed image despite the limited image display area. Specifically, images presented within a zoom and pan interface allow the user to zoom in to a particular area of a displayed image to see additional detail, pan to view various areas of the displayed image, and to zoom out again to view the whole displayed image in context. The ZAP feature is applied to a dynamically generated image that includes at least one dynamic image feature, and viewing-region-tracking information is generated enabling user viewing characteristics to be tracked and analyzed.