Image display apparatus

• US 8,830,307 B2
• Filed: 02/02/2006
• Issued: 09/09/2014
• 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): Survillo, Oleg
• Application Number:
  US11/631,273
• Publication Number:
  US 20080212881A1
• Time in Patent Office: 3,141 Days
• Field of Search: 348/65, 348/45, 382/128, 382/190, 382/195, 382/224, 382/225, 382/243
• US Class Current: 348/65
• 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 extracting unit (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 processor comprising hardware, the image processor executing;

an image classification unit that classifies each of images included in the series of images into two or more image groups, including one or more temporally consecutive images, 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 each of feature images including the detected feature-image area from the series of images;

a representative-image extracting unit that extracts each of the feature images included in each of the two or more image groups as one or more representative images that represent each of the two or more image groups when each of the two or more image groups includes at least one feature image, and extracts one image based on a predetermined criteria as a representative image from each of the two or more image groups when each of the two or more image groups does not include a feature image;

a feature-image selector that calculates a variation amount of a predetermined feature amount of the feature-image area generated between the temporally continuous feature images from among a plurality of the feature images detected by the feature-image detector, and selects a feature-representative image that represents a plurality of the feature images based on the calculated variation amount; and

an image display controller comprising hardware that performs a control of sequentially displaying the representative images extracted by the representative-image extracting unit one by one in a temporal order by displaying the representative image which is a feature image at a slow-display rate and displaying the representative image which is not a feature image at a normal-display rate which is faster than the slow-display rate;

wherein

the feature-image detector calculates the predetermined feature amount of each of the detected feature-image areas,

the feature-image selector calculates the variation amount based on the feature amount calculated by the feature-image detector,

the representative-image extracting unit extracts the feature-representative image as the representative image from among the feature images in each of the image groups, and

the predetermined feature amount is a position of the feature-image area in the feature-image.

2. The image display apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the image display controller performs a control of displaying a mark indicating the feature image in a neighborhood of the representative image, when the representative image of the feature image is displayed.

3. The image display apparatus according to claim 1, wherein

each of the images is a captured image of an inside of organs, and

the predetermined feature is a feature that indicates a lesion of the inside of the organs.

4. The image display apparatus according to claim 3, wherein the feature that indicates the lesion is at least one of a bleeding, a discoloration, and a shape anomaly.

5. The image display apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the series of images is generated by using a capsule endoscope.

6. The image display apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the representative-image extracting unit extracts, as the representative image of each of the two or more image groups, a temporally first image in each of the two or more image groups, a temporally last image in each of the two or more image groups, or an image in a predetermined order in each of the two or more image groups when each of the two or more image groups does not include the feature image.