System and method for early access to captured images

• US 9,275,080 B2
• Filed: 03/15/2013
• Issued: 03/01/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 03/15/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Pictometry International Corporation (EagleView Technologies Incorporated)
• Original Assignee: Pictometry International Corporation (EagleView Technologies Incorporated)
• Inventors: Giuffrida, Frank D., Adams, Steve, Schnaufer, Chris, Skolny, Chad, Gray, Robert
• Primary Examiner(s): NGUYEN, PHONG H
• Application Number:
  US13/833,352
• Publication Number:
  US 20140280354A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,082 Days
• Field of Search: 707/769
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/248 Presentation of query results
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/29 Geographical information databases
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/51 Indexing; Data structures therefor; Storage structures
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/5866 using information manually generated, e.g. tags, keywords, comments, manually generated location and time information
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 1/0007 Image acquisition

Abstract

Systems and methods are disclosed for early access to captured images including generating and storing within a geospatial database a plurality of placeholder records having information identifying a particular captured image and including at least one geographic image boundary field containing information indicative of a real-world geographic area depicted within the image, an image file location field, and an image status field; receive a plurality of signals from one or more processing computer, at least two of the signals having the information identifying particular captured images, and second information indicative of updates indicating a change in at least one of the image location and image processing status for the image identified by the first information; and populating at least one of the image location and the image processing status of the placeholders within the geospatial database with the information indicative of updates for identified captured images.

Claims

1. A computer system comprising one or more non-transitory computer readable mediums storing computer executable code that when executed by one or more servers of the computer system cause the one or more servers to:

generate and store a plurality of placeholder records for captured images within a geospatial database, each of the placeholder records having first information identifying a particular captured image and including at least one geographic image boundary field containing information indicative of a real-world geographic area depicted within the image, an image file location field, and an image status field;

receive a plurality of signals from one or more processing computer, at least two of the signals having the first information identifying particular captured images, and second information indicative of updates indicating a change in at least one of an image file location and image processing status for the captured images identified by the first information; and

populating at least one of the image file location field and the image status field of the placeholder records within the geospatial database with the second information indicative of updates indicating a change in at least one of the image file location and image processing status for the captured images identified in the first information.

2. The computer system of claim 1, wherein the placeholder records have or are linked to:

at least one metadata field adapted to store geo-location information for a captured image, and

at least one image raster data field adapted to store at least a portion of the captured image, and

wherein the computer executable code is adapted to cause the one or more servers to populate the at least one metadata field and the at least one image raster data field after at least two processing steps have been completed for the captured images.

3. The computer system of claim 2, wherein more than two processing steps must be completed to fully process the captured images, and wherein the computer executable code is adapted to cause the one or more servers to update or populate the at least one metadata field and the at least one image raster data field after processing of the captured images is completed.

4. The computer system of claim 1, wherein the image file location field for each captured image includes information identifying a project directory on at least one processing drive.

5. The computer system of claim 4, wherein the information of the image file location field identifies a filename and project directory accessible by the one or more processing computer.

6. The computer system of claim 1, wherein the image file location for each captured image includes logic for accessing geo-location data associated with the captured image.

7. A computer system comprising one or more non-transitory computer readable mediums storing computer executable code that when executed by one or more servers of the computer system cause the one or more servers to:

receive a request for at least one image of a geographic area from a client application of an operator user device;

query records within a geospatial database to locate one or more records of images accessible by the geospatial database and depicting at least a portion of the geographic area;

for at least one record located in the query;

read a first field within the record indicating a status of the image, wherein the status of the image is based on at least one of a status of post-capture image processing and whether the image is in post-capture image processing;

read a second field within the record responsive to the status of the image indicating that the image is not stored in the geospatial database, the second field having information indicative of a location of the image in a non-transient memory; and

present the image to the client application of the operator user device utilizing the information of the second field to identify the location of the image in the non-transient memory.

8. The computer system of claim 7, wherein the post-capture image processing includes at least one of color-balancing the image, quality control processing of the image, and geo-referencing the image.

9. The computer system of claim 7, wherein the non-transient memory is at least one processing drive.

10. The computer system of claim 9, wherein the image is retrieved from an image file stored on the at least one processing drive, rather than from the geospatial database, and then presented to the client application of the operator user device.