Digital Camera Device and Methodology for Distributed Processing and Wireless Transmission of Digital Images

• US 20090033752A1
• Filed: 05/12/2008
• Published: 02/05/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 06/08/1999
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: RPX Corporation
• Original Assignee: LightSurf Technologies, Inc. (VeriSign, Inc.)
• Inventors: Kahn, Sonia Lee, Kahn, Philippe R., Bodnar, Eric O., Easwar, Venkat V., Kirani, Shekhar
• Granted Patent: US 8,212,893 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 348/211.300
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 23/60 Control of cameras or camera modules
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 23/80 Camera processing pipelines; Components thereof

Abstract

A digital imaging system is described that provides techniques for reducing the amount of processing power required by a given digital camera device and for reducing the bandwidth required for transmitting image information to a target platform. The system defers and/or distributes the processing between the digital imager (i.e., digital camera itself) and the target platform that the digital imager will ultimately be connected to. In this manner, the system is able to decrease the actual computation that occurs at the digital imager. Instead, the system only performs a partial computation at the digital imager device and completes the computation somewhere else, such as at a target computing device (e.g., desktop computer) where time and size are not an issue (relative to the imager). By deferring resource-intensive computations, the present invention substantially reduces the processor requirements and concomitant battery requirements for digital cameras. Further, by adopting an image strategy optimized for compression (compressed luminosity record), the present invention decreases the bandwidth requirements for transmitting images, thereby facilitating the wireless transmission of digital camera images.

Claims

1-68. -68. (canceled)

69. In a digital imaging system, a method for distributed digital image processing, the method comprising:

received compression luminosity information at a device, the compressed luminosity information generated by a second device using a wavelet transform, quantization, and compression of luminosity information;

restoring the luminosity information from the compressed luminosity information; and

converting the luminosity information into a color image.

70. The method according to claim 69, wherein the luminosity information comprises light-level information for representing an image that has been digitally captured at the first device.

71. The method according to claim 69, wherein generating the compressed luminosity information by comprises:

applying generic binary compression to the compressed luminosity information at the first device.

72. The method according to claim 71, wherein applying generic binary compression includes applying run-length encoding.

73. The method according to claim 71, wherein applying generic binary compression includes applying Huffman coding.

74. The method of claim 69, wherein restoring includes reversing the compression that occurred at the first device.

75. The method of claim 69, wherein converting the luminosity information into a color image includes:

interpolating color information for the image from the luminosity information.

76. The method of claim 69, further comprising:

first receiving a lower-quality representation of the image captured at the first device.

77. The method of claim 76, wherein the lower-quality representation of the image is converted into a higher-quality representation at a later point in time.

78. The method of claim 77, wherein the lower-quality representation of the image is converted into a higher-quality representation by synchronizing the lower-quality representation with the higher-quality representation.

79. In a digital imaging system, a method for deferring digital image processing, the method comprising:

receiving compressed sensor information from a device, the sensor information compressed prior to color processing;

decompressing the compressed sensor information; and

processing the compressed sensor information into a color image.

80. The method of claim 79, wherein the sensor information comprises light-level information for representing an image that has been digitally recorded at a first device.

81. The method of claim 79, wherein the sensor information is compressed by:

applying a wavelet transform to the light sensor image; and

applying compression to the transformed sensor image, to create the compressed sensor information at the first device.

82. The method of claim 81, wherein applying compression to the transformed sensor image includes one of the following:

applying compression using run-length encoding and applying compression using Huffman coding.

83. The method of claim 79, further comprising:

converting the compressed sensor information into a color image by interpolating color information for the image from the compressed sensor information.

84. The method of claim 79, further comprising:

receiving a first lower-quality representation of the image recorded at the first device.

85. The method of claim 84, further comprising:

converting the lower-quality representation of the image into a higher-quality representation at a later point in time.

86. The method of claim 85, wherein the converting comprises synchronizing the lower-quality representation with the higher-quality representation.

87. An imaging system providing deferred image processing, the system comprising:

a communication link for receiving compressed luminosity information from an imager, the compressed luminosity information generated form luminosity information captured by an imager;

a decompression module for decompressing the compressed luminosity information at the target device, whereupon the sensor information may therefore be processed into a color image.

88. The system of claim 87, wherein the communication link first receives a lower-quality representation of the image captured at the imager, and wherein the lower-quality representation is converted into a higher-quality representation at a later point in time by synchronizing the lower-quality representation with the higher-quality representation.