IMAGE PROCESSING APPARATUS AND IMAGE PROCESSING METHOD

• US 20080118180A1
• Filed: 11/19/2007
• Published: 05/22/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 11/22/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: OPT Corporation, Sony Corporation (Sony Group Corp.)
• Original Assignee: OPT Corporation, Sony Corporation (Sony Group Corp.)
• Inventors: Ito, Masayuki, Kamiya, Ryo
• Granted Patent: US 8,189,953 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 382/275
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 3/12 Panospheric to cylindrical image transformations

Abstract

An image processing apparatus is disclosed. The image processing apparatus includes a thinning-out section generating thinned-out line data of thinned-out data constituted by a plurality of the thinned-out line data, the thinned-out data being obtained by thinning out wide-field image data with distortion captured using a wide-angle lens, and sequentially outputting the thinned-out line data at every predetermined timing, a switching section performing switching from an output of the wide-field image data to an output of the thinned-out line data in response to the predetermined timing, and a buffer temporarily storing the wide-field image data and the thinned-out data constituted by the plurality of thinned-out data outputted after the switching.

Claims

1. An image processing apparatus, comprising:

a thinning-out section generating thinned-out line data of thinned-out data constituted by a plurality of the thinned-out line data, the thinned-out data being obtained by thinning out wide-field image data with distortion captured using a wide-angle lens, and sequentially outputting the thinned-out line data at every predetermined timing;

a switching section performing switching from an output of the wide-field image data to an output of the thinned-out line data in response to the predetermined timing; and

a buffer temporarily storing the wide-field image data and the thinned-out data constituted by the plurality of thinned-out line data outputted after the switching.

2. The image processing apparatus as set forth in claim 1,

wherein the thinning-out section includes:

a first addition section adding pixel data of respective pixels constituting the wide-field image data in units of a predetermined number of pixels in a line direction and outputting added pixel data obtained by the addition; and

a second addition section adding line data constituted by a predetermined number of the added pixel data sequentially outputted in units of a predetermined number of lines in a column direction and outputting the thinned-out line data obtained by the addition.

3. The image processing apparatus as set forth in claim 1, further comprising

a conversion section converting RGB data of the wide-field image into luminance/color difference data containing luminance data and color difference data,

wherein the thinning-out section generates the thinned-out line data of the luminance/color difference data obtained by the conversion by the conversion section.

4. The image processing apparatus as set forth in claim 3,

wherein the thinning-out section generates the thinned-out line data in the same format as that of the luminance/color difference data obtained by the conversion by the conversion section.

5. The image processing apparatus as set forth in claim 1, further comprising:

a correction section correcting the distortion of an image of a selected area selected out of the wide-field image; and

a synthesis section synthesizing a distortion-corrected image obtained by the correction section and the thinned-out data including a highlighted area obtained by highlighting the selected area as image data of one screen.

6. An image processing method, comprising:

generating thinned-out line data of thinned-out data constituted by a plurality of the thinned-out line data, the thinned-out data being obtained by thinning out wide-field image data with distortion captured using a wide-angle lens;

sequentially outputting the thinned-out line data at every predetermined timing;

performing switching from an output of the wide-field image data to an output of the thinned-out line data in response to the predetermined timing; and

temporarily storing the wide-field image data and the thinned-out data constituted by the plurality of thinned-out line data outputted after the switching.