IMAGE PROCESSING APPARATUS, IMAGE PROCESSING METHOD AND PROGRAM

• US 20120307099A1
• Filed: 05/24/2012
• Published: 12/06/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 05/30/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha (Canon Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha (Canon Inc.)
• Inventors: Yahata, Kazuhiro
• Granted Patent: US 9,066,034 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 348/222.1
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 1/0007 Image acquisition
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2200/21 involving computational photography
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2207/10052 Images from lightfield camera
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 5/50 using two or more images, e.g. averaging or subtraction
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 13/232 using fly-eye lenses, e.g. arrangements of circular lenses
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 2013/0088 Synthesising a monoscopic image signal from stereoscopic images, e.g. synthesising a panoramic or high resolution monoscopic image
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 23/631 Graphical user interfaces [GUI] specially adapted for controlling image capture or setting capture parameters
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 23/633 for displaying additional information relating to control or operation of the camera
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 25/702 SSIS architectures characterised by non-identical, non-equidistant or non-planar pixel layout

Abstract

When the super-resolution processing is performed, loss of signal occurs due to the aperture effect, and adversely affects the image quality. In order to improve the image quality by suppressing the occurrence of loss of signal, a pixel aperture characteristic provided for some of image capturing units differs from a pixel aperture characteristic provided for the other image capturing units, and a plurality of digital images are captured by these image capturing units and are synthesized thereafter.

Claims

1. An image processing apparatus comprising:

an input unit configured to input a plurality of digital image data obtained by a plurality of image capturing units, wherein a pixel aperture characteristic provided for at least some of the image capturing units differs from a pixel aperture characteristic provided for the other image capturing units;

an obtaining unit configured to obtain design parameters including the pixel aperture characteristics for the plurality of image capturing units; and

a generation unit configured to synthesize the plurality of digital image data input by the input unit using the obtained designed parameters to generate developed image data, wherein the developed image data represents an image consisting of a greater number of pixels than each image represented by the digital image data obtained by the each image capturing unit.

2. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the input unit is configured to input a plurality of digital image data obtained by the plurality of image capturing units capturing a same subject at the almost the same time, wherein the pixel aperture characteristic provided for at least some of the image capturing units differs from the pixel aperture characteristic provided for the other image capturing units.

3. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1,

wherein the obtaining unit obtains design parameters including the pixel aperture characteristics for the plurality of image capturing units and image capturing parameters of the plurality of image capturing units at the image capturing time;

and

wherein the generation unit synthesizes the plurality of digital image data input by the input unit using the obtained designed parameters and the obtained image capturing parameters to generate developed image data, wherein the developed image data represents an image consisting of a greater number of pixels than each image represented by the digital image data obtained by the each image capturing unit.

4. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the pixel aperture characteristics indicate at the least one of a pixel aperture size, a pixel aperture shape or an imaging magnification of a subject.

5. The image processing apparatus according to claim 4, wherein the pixel aperture characteristics are determined for the individual image capturing units such that a degree of loss of signal for the synthesized image is lower than a predetermined degree.

6. The image processing apparatus according to claim 5, wherein, according to the pixel aperture shape, a type of pixel aperture shape is determined such that the degree of loss of signal is lower than the predetermined degree.

7. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein a pixel count for a developed image generated by the generation unit is four times a pixel count for digital images obtained by the each image capturing unit.

9. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing a program for causing a computer to function as the image processing apparatus according to claim 1.

8. An image processing method comprising:

an input step of inputting a plurality of digital image data obtained by a plurality of image capturing units, wherein a pixel aperture characteristic provided for at least some of the image capturing units differs from a pixel aperture characteristic provided for the other image capturing units;

an obtaining step of obtaining design parameters including the pixel aperture characteristics for the plurality of image capturing units; and

a generation step of to synthesizing the plurality of digital image data input at the input step using the obtained designed parameters to generate developed image data, wherein the developed image data represents an image consisting of a greater number of pixels than each image represented by the digital image data obtained by the each image capturing unit.

10. An image capturing apparatus comprises a plurality of image capturing units, wherein a pixel aperture characteristic provided for at least some of the image capturing units differs from a pixel aperture characteristic provided for the other image capturing units;