CLASSIFYING IMAGE REGIONS BASED ON PICTURE LOCATION

• US 20070297683A1
• Filed: 06/26/2006
• Published: 12/27/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 06/26/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Monument Peak Ventures, LLC (Dominion Harbor Enterprises, LLC)
• Original Assignee: Eastman Kodak Company
• Inventors: Luo, Jiebo, Gallagher, Andrew C.
• Granted Patent: US 7,860,320 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 382/224
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 20/10 Terrestrial scenes scenes under surveillance with static cameras G06V20/52; scenes perceived from the exterior of a vehicle G06V20/56; scenes perceived from the interior of a vehicle G06V20/59

Abstract

A method of classifying regions in a digital image or video captured by an image capture device includes providing a geographic location determining device associated with the image capture device; using the location determining device to measure the image capture location at substantially the time that the digital image or video was captured; and classifying regions in the captured digital image or video into one or more classes based on the image-capture location.

Claims

1. A method of classifying regions in a digital image or video captured by an image capture device comprising:

a) providing a geographic location determining device associated with the image capture device;

b) using the location determining device to measure the image capture location at substantially the time that the digital image or video was captured; and

c) classifying regions in the captured digital image or video into one or more classes based on the image capture location.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more classes include sky, grass, water, clouds, pavement, snow, or walls.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein step (c) further includes:

i) obtaining homogenous regions from the captured digital image or a frame of the video;

ii) extracting features from the homogeneous regions; and

iii) classifying the region into one or more classes, with associated class probabilities, based on the image capture location and the extracted features.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the extracted features include color or texture features associated with the region.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein step (c) further includes using the image-capture time to classify regions of the digital image.

6. The method of claim 3, wherein step (ii) further includes using the image-capture time to classify regions of the digital image.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein step (c) further includes using the camera-facing direction to classify regions of the digital image.

8. The method of claim 3, wherein step (ii) further includes using the camera-facing direction to classify regions of the digital image.

9. The method of claim 3 wherein step (iii) includes associating prior probabilities of classes according to geographic location and using such prior probabilities to determine the class of a region.

10. The method of claim 3 wherein step (iii) includes associating conditional probabilities between classes according to geographic location and using such conditional probabilities to determine the respective class of each region.

11. The method of claim 10 wherein the conditional probabilities between classes are specified as pair-wise probabilities according to one or more of spatial relationships including above, far above, below, far below, beside, enclosed, or enclosing.

12. The method of claim 3 wherein step (iii) further includes

(i) producing initial class probabilities based only on the extracted features;

(ii) using a graphical model to modify the initial class probabilities to produce posterior class probabilities in response to the prior probabilities and the conditional probabilities between classes according to geographic location.

13. The method of claim 3 further includes labeling a region as the class with highest posterior class probability.

14. A method of enhancing regions in a digital image or a video frame captured by an image capture device comprising:

a) providing a geographic location determining device associated with the image capture device;

b) using the geographic location determining device to measure the image capture location at substantially the time that the digital image or video was captured;

c) classifying regions in the captured digital image or video into one or more classes based on the image capture location; and

d) applying image enhancement to classified regions depending on the class of each region.

15. A method of searching in a database a digital image or a video frame captured by an image capture device comprising:

a) providing a geographic location determining device associated with the image capture device;

b) using the geographic location determining device to measure the image capture location at substantially the time that the digital image or video was captured;

c) classifying regions in the captured digital image or video into one or more classes based on the image capture location; and

d) searching in a database for images containing regions of one or more pre-determined classes.

16. A method of classifying regions in a digital image or video captured by an image capture device comprising:

a) providing a time determining device associated with the image capture device;

b) using the time determining device to measure the image capture time at substantially the time that the digital image or video was captured; and

c) classifying regions in the captured digital image or video into one or more classes based on the image capture time.