METHODS AND COMPUTER READABLE MEDIUM FOR DISPLAYING A RESTORED IMAGE

• US 20090060373A1
• Filed: 08/20/2008
• Published: 03/05/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 08/24/2007
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: General Electric Company
• Original Assignee: General Electric Company
• Inventors: Verschueren, Benjamin Thomas, Wheeler, Frederick Wilson, Krahnstoever, Nils Oliver, Hoogs, Anthony James, Perera, Ambalangoda Gurunnanselage Amitha
• Application Number:
  US12/195,017
• Publication Number:
  US 20090060373A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 382/264
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2200/24 involving graphical user interfaces [GUIs]
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2207/20201 Motion blur correction
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 5/73 Deblurring; Sharpening
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 7/20 Analysis of motion motion estimation for coding, decoding, compressing or decompressing digital video signals H04N19/43, H04N19/51

Abstract

Methods and computer program readable medium for restoring an image. The methods include the steps of selecting one or more frames followed by determining the regions of interest so that blurring effect is determined in the regions of interest using various techniques. The regions of interest are then deblurred and one of the deblurred regions of interest is then blended with the frame resulting in a restored frame.

Claims

1. A method of image restoration, comprising:

selecting at least one frame to be restored;

selecting at least one region of interest in the frame;

estimating motion within said region of interest;

determining blur within said region of interest;

performing deblurring of said region of interest; and

generating a restored region of interest in said frame.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the frame is interlaced and split in two or more frames for estimating motion in said region of interest.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the region of interest occupies substantially all of said frame.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein region of interest selection comprises one of automatic selection, semi-automatic selection or manual selection using a graphical user interface.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein the region of interest selection further comprises selecting a point of interest.

6. The method of claim 5 wherein the motion estimation is performed about the point of interest.

7. The method of claim 5 wherein the region of interest selection comprises selection of a point of interest around which the region of interest is established.

8. The method of claim 5 wherein selecting the point of interest comprises one of manual selection or automatic selection.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein the region of interest selection comprises automatic selection of a center point in said region around which motion estimation is performed.

10. The method of claim 1 wherein estimating motion comprises deinterlacing said frames and determining a pixel-to-pixel motion between said deinterlaced frames.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the region of interest comprises at least one object in the region of interest.

12. The method of claim 11 comprising estimating motion of said object.

13. The method of claims 12 wherein the deblurring comprises deblurring said object in the region of interest.

14. The method of claim 1 wherein the motion estimation comprises determining a motion estimation vector in the region of interest.

15. The method of claim 14 wherein the motion estimation comprises determining a number of variations of the motion estimation vector.

16. The method of claims 15 wherein deblurring comprises deblurring the region of interest using said number of variations of the motion estimation vector resulting in a number of restored regions of interest.

17. The method of claim 16 wherein a user selects a best-restored region of interest out of the number of restored regions of interest.

18. The method of claim 1 wherein said blur comprises at least one of optical blur and motion blur.

19. The method of claim 1 wherein blur estimation comprises using at least one of motion estimation or domain information.

20. The method of claim 19 wherein the domain information comprises optical motion, object motion, camera motion and object of frame information.

21. The method of claim 1 wherein the deblurring is performed by using at least one of Wiener filtering, morphological filtering, wavelet denoising and linear and non linear image reconstruction with or without regularization.

22. The method of claim 1, wherein generating of the restored image in the frame further comprises blending the restored region of interest with the frame.

23. The method of claim 22 wherein the blending further comprises feather blending of the edges of contact of the restored region of interest with the frame.

24. The method of claims 22 wherein the blending comprises blending of a number of restored regions of interest with said frame resulting in a number of restored frames.

25. The method of claim 24 wherein a user selects a best-restored frame out of the number of restored frames.

26. A method for restoring at least a portion of a frame, comprising:

selecting said frame for restoration,

deinterlacing said frame to obtain at least one of a previous frame or a subsequent frame;

establishing a region of interest in said frame;

estimating at least one of an optical blur kernel and a motion blur kernel;

deblurring said region of interest using at least said motion blur kernel and said optical blur kernel and creating a deblurred region; and

blending said deblurred region into said frame.

27. The method of claim 26 wherein at least one of said motion blur kernel and said optical blur kernel are derived from domain information.

28. The method of claim 26 further comprising performing motion estimation in the region of interest denoting the motion of pixels between adjacent frames.

29. The method of claim 26 wherein said establishing the region of interest is performed by a user with a graphical user interface on a computer.

30. A computer readable medium comprising computer executable instructions adapted to perform the method of claim 26.