Image display apparatus

• US 8,502,861 B2
• Filed: 04/18/2007
• Issued: 08/06/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 05/20/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Olympus Corporation
• Original Assignee: Olympus Medical Systems Corporation (Olympus Corporation)
• Inventors: Hirakawa, Katsumi
• Primary Examiner(s): Hussain, Tauqir
• Application Number:
  US11/787,980
• Publication Number:
  US 20070195165A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,302 Days
• Field of Search: 348/399.1, 375/240.08, 382/243
• US Class Current: 348/45
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 1/00045 Display arrangement
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 1/0005 combining images e.g. side-by-side, superimposed or tiled
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 1/042 characterised by a proximal camera, e.g. a CCD camera
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2207/10068 Endoscopic image
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2207/30028 Colon; Small intestine
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2207/30092 Stomach; Gastric
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 7/0012 Biomedical image inspection
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 7/32 using correlation-based methods
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 7/33 using feature-based methods

Abstract

To reduce a display time of an image for which an observation is less required, and to effectively perform an observation of a series of images, the image display apparatus (1) includes an image processing controller (2a) that acquires an image from a storage unit (5), controls various image processes for the acquired image, and stores an image of a processing result in the storage unit (5), an image classification unit (2b) that calculates a correlation value between temporally continuous images and classifies each of the images into an image group based on the calculated correlation value, an image-of-interest detecting unit (2c) that detects a feature-image area including a predetermined feature from each of the images, and detects the feature image including the detected feature-image area as an image-of-interest, a representative-image extractor (2d) that extracts the image-of-interest and a first image in each of the image groups as a representative image and sets a display rate for each of the extracted representative images, and an image display controller (6a) that performs a control of sequentially displaying the series of representative images based on the set display rates.

Claims

1. An image display apparatus that sequentially displays a series of input images, the image display apparatus comprising:

an image classification unit that classifies each of images included in the series of images into at least one image group, based on a correlation level among each of the images;

a feature-image detector that detects a feature-image area including a predetermined feature from each of the images, and detects a feature image that includes the detected feature-image area from the series of images;

an extraction-level setting unit that sets an extraction level of each of representative images to be extracted for each of the image groups, from among the images classified in the image groups;

a representative-image extractor that extracts at least the feature image as the representative image from among each of the images classified in each of the image groups, in response to the extraction level set by the extraction-level setting unit, and that sets a different display rate depending on whether the representative image is the feature image or not; and

an image display controller that sequentially controls to display at least the representative images using the different display rate set by the representative-image extractor.

2. The image display apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the representative-image extractor extracts an image positioned at a predetermined order in time series in each of the image groups as the representative image of each of the image groups, in response to the extraction-level set by the extraction-level setting unit.

3. The image display apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the extraction-level setting unit sets a previously selected level as the extraction level, from among a first extraction level for extracting the feature image, a second extraction level for extracting the feature image and a first image positioned at a top of each of the image groups in time series, and a third extraction level for extracting the feature image, the first image, and an end image positioned at an end of each of the image groups in time series.

4. The image display apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising:

a display-mode setting unit that sets a display mode of each of the images classified in each of the image groups, wherein

the image display controller sequentially controls to display the images other than the representative image from among the series of images, in response to the display mode set by the display-mode setting unit.

5. The image display apparatus according to claim 4, wherein the display-mode setting unit sets a mode as the display mode, where the mode is selected from among a first display mode for sequentially and exclusively displaying the representative images, a second display mode for displaying all images classified in each of the image groups, and a third display mode for displaying continuous images continued at predetermined numbers in time series to the representative image from among the images classified in each of the image groups.

6. The image display apparatus according to claim 4, wherein the image display controller controls to change a display rate of each of the images to be sequentially displayed, in response to the display mode set by the display-mode setting unit.