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Adaptive image acquisition system

  • US 4,949,391 A
  • Filed: 05/08/1987
  • Issued: 08/14/1990
  • Est. Priority Date: 09/26/1986
  • Status: Expired due to Fees
First Claim
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1. An adaptive image acquisition system for optically scanning a media surface bearing static information in a particular direction and providing in real time a digital data representation of the scanned portion of the surface, comprising:

  • a hand-held camera comprising an image sensor array of photosensitive pixel elements arranged in r rows and C columns;

    means for exposing said pixel elements for capturing sequential images of the portion of said media surface within the field of view of said array;

    means for reading out from said imaging array resulting digital data values for said pixel elements to provide sequential frames of digital image data comprising C columns and R rows of data;

    means for real time processing of successive ones of said frames of image data to remove data therefrom which is redundant to image data in the preceding image frame, said means comprising;

    means for storing two successive frames of data, the initial frame known as the reference frame and the next frame known as the current frame;

    means for selecting a reference window defined by a subset of the pixel element values comprising said reference frame, said selecting means comprising means for adaptively determining said window size in dependence on the rate of relative movement between said imaging array and said media surface to decrease the size of said reference window as said rate increases; and

    means for accessing said storing means and comparing selected pixel element values comprising the current frame with the pixel element values comprising said reference window and determining which pixel element data of said current frame is redundant to the pixel element data comprising said reference window; and

    means for providing an output image frame data set for each acquired image frame which includes data representative of only the pixel element data determined to be non-redundant to the pixel element data of the next preceding image frame.

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