Visual Ear Cleaning Interface for Stable Ear-Pick Positioning
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing ear cleaning tools, such as visual ear spoons, struggle with image stabilization and user interface design, leading to potential ear injury due to distraction and difficulty in accurately positioning the ear pick during earwax removal.
Innovation Solution
An image processing method for an ear cleaning arrangement that includes a camera, attitude sensor, and light source assembly, with a split-screen display on a smart terminal to stabilize images and provide a focused operation interface, allowing automatic switching between left and right ear modes and maintaining a reference object on the interface.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If images captured by the camera are displayed on the smartphone screen, then the user can locate earwax in the ear canal, but the constantly changing images make it difficult to accurately position the ear pick
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies preliminary action by pre-processing the captured images to stabilize them before display. The image processing unit stabilizes the captured images to reduce shaking and instability, ensuring that the earwax position remains clearly visible and accurately locatable on the smartphone screen throughout the cleaning process.
2Ease of operation
If the smartphone is placed in front of the user's eyes for viewing images, then the user can observe the ear canal, but this leads to instability and shaking when using the visual ear spoon
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies segmentation by separating the image capture function from the display function. The camera element is integrated into the ear spoon for capturing images inside the ear canal, while the smartphone serves as a separate display device. This segmentation allows the user to hold the ear spoon steadily in the ear while viewing stabilized images on the smartphone, eliminating the conflict between observation and stability.
3Device complexity
If the camera is limited to a cylindrical mounting part, then the structure is simple, but the images captured are restricted to a circular shape that does not fill the rectangular smartphone display screen
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies parameter changes by transforming the circular image captured by the cylindrical-mounted camera into a rectangular format suitable for the smartphone display. The image processing unit processes and converts the circular image to fill the rectangular screen area, thereby maximizing display screen utilization without changing the simple cylindrical camera mounting structure.
4Area of stationary object
If additional content is displayed on the smartphone screen outside the circular image area, then the screen is fully utilized, but this may distract the user's attention and potentially lead to injury
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies the taking out principle by extracting and removing any additional content that might be displayed outside the circular image area. The display is configured to show only the stabilized ear canal images without any distracting additional content, ensuring that the user's attention remains focused solely on the ear canal visualization and the cleaning operation.
Data Source
AI summary
An image processing method for a visual ear cleaning assembly, includes the following steps: selecting a frame from the video stream collected to be recorded as a recorded image and recognizing a target to be processed by analyzing the recorded image; acquiring attitude information corresponding to the time point of the recorded image to obtain recorded attitude information; determining whether the target to be processed has changed, wherein if the target to be processed has not changed, recognizing the attitude of the ear cleaning arrangement and determining whether the ear cleaning arrangement is shaking, and if shaking occurs, adopting a corresponding image display method.