Multiple-View Processing in Wide-Angle Video Camera

• US 20090102950A1
• Filed: 11/03/2008
• Published: 04/23/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 05/02/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Yavuz Ahiska
• Original Assignee: Yavuz Ahiska
• Inventors: Ahiska, Yavuz
• Granted Patent: US 8,243,135 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 348/240.200
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 23/58 Means for changing the camera field of view without moving the camera body, e.g. nutating or panning of optics or image sensors
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 23/698 for achieving an enlarged field of view, e.g. panoramic image capture
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 5/2628 Alteration of picture size, shape, position or orientation, e.g. zooming, rotation, rolling, perspective, translation

Abstract

A motion video camera that removes the need for mechanical pan, tilt, and zoom apparatus is disclosed. The video camera includes the following. A wide-angle optical system is configured to receive an optical image. An image sensor is coupled to the optical system and is configured to convert the optical image to an electronic image. An image processing circuit is coupled to the image sensor and is configured to receive the electronic image and to execute movement and zoom operations by correcting distortions in the electronic image introduced by the wide-angle optical system and image sensor.

Claims

1. A video camera comprising:

a wide-angle optical system configured to receive an optical image;

a high-resolution image sensor coupled to the optical system and configured to convert the optical image to an electronic image;

an image processing circuit coupled to the image sensor and configured to receive and process the electronic image, one of its tasks being to correct optical distortion through reference to a table of parameters specific to a combination of the optical system and the image sensor on one or more regions of interest of the captured said electronic image;

a control circuit coupled to said image processing circuit and configured to receive movement and zoom commands to transmit a signal to said image processing circuit relating the movement and zoom commands specific to at least one region of interest in said electronic image, wherein the region of interest includes at least a portion anywhere within said electronic image; and

an output circuit coupled to said image processing circuit capable of outputting in a plurality of electronic signal formats.

12. The video camera of claim 1, wherein the output circuit comprises a compression and formatting circuit.

13. The video camera of claim 1, wherein the output circuit outputs an electronic video signal to a coupled base station, and the base station provides command inputs to the control circuit.

14. The video camera of claim 1, wherein

image processing can comprise:

distortion correction;

filtering;

color correction;

or

white balance adjustment.

15. The video camera of claim 1, wherein the image processing circuit comprises:

a digital signal processor, comprising—

an arithmetic and logic unit controlled by a coupled instruction sequencer, which fetches instructions from a memory;

at least one of a coupled register storage or memory storing image data for processing; and

accessed algorithms for processing an image comprising a least one of sharpening, contrast adjustment, color adjustment, resizing, or analysis.

16. The video camera of claim 1, wherein the image processing circuit comprises:

a programmable graphics processor, comprising—

a rasterizer producing coordinates of an output image transmitted to a coupled pixel shader calculating the pixels in the source image to use, causes the pixels to be read from a coupled memory, and filtered by a coupled filter; and

accessed algorithms for processing an image comprising a least one of sharpening, contrast adjustment, color adjustment, resizing, or analysis.

17. The video camera of claim 1, wherein the image processing circuit comprises a combination of a digital processing circuit and a graphics processor.

18. The video camera of claim 1, wherein at least one region of interest is simultaneously monitored while maintaining visibility of the full electronic image.

2-11. -11. (canceled)

19. A video camera comprising:

at least one image sensor coupled to an optical system capturing a distorted image to convert the optical image into an electronic image;

an image processing circuit coupled to the at least one image sensor receiving and processing the electronic image to correct the distorted image via factors specific to the combined optical system and at least one image sensor on one or more regions of interest of the electronic image, wherein movement and zoom commands specific to at least one region of interest anywhere within the image are executed to produce at least one zoomed electronic image while maintaining visibility of the full electronic image;

a control circuit coupled to said image processing circuit; and

an output circuit coupled to the image processing circuit.

20. The video camera of claim 19, wherein the control circuit receives movement and zoom commands to transmit to the image processing circuit executing the movement and zoom commands, wherein the region of interest comprises at least a portion of the electronic image.

21. The video camera of claim 20, wherein the image processing circuit scales the region of interest up or down.

22. The video camera of claim 19, wherein a plurality of regions of interest are simultaneously monitored while maintaining visibility of the full electronic image.

23. The video camera of claim 19, wherein the output circuit is capable of outputting in a plurality of electronic signal formats.

24. A method for operating a video camera system, comprising the steps of:

receiving a distorted wide-angle optical image converted into an electronic signal of image frames at an image processing circuit;

processing the image frames to correct wide-angle optical distortion, which includes one or more regions of interest within the image frames, wherein view commands specific to the one or more regions of interest are executed via manipulating the image frame data to produce an electronic image frame for each of the one or more regions of interest anywhere within the full electronic image frame while maintaining visibility of the full electronic image frame; and

outputting a plurality of electronic image frames to a coupled base station corresponding to each of the one or more regions of interest and the full electronic image.

25. The method of claim 24, wherein the view commands comprise at least one of a movement and a zoom component.

26. The method of claim 24, further comprising the steps of:

formatting the plurality of electronic image frames; and

compressing the plurality of electronic image frames.

27. The method of claim 24, further comprising the step of:

transmitting the one or more regions of interest as thumbnails, interleaved fields or frames, or multiplexed.

28. The method of claim 24, further comprising the step of:

storing image frames on a memory.

29. The method of claim 28, further comprising the steps of:

transmitting stored image frames to a base station upon detection of event; and

extracting portions of the image frames relative to the event.

30. The method of claim 24, further comprising the steps of:

automatically detecting an event using mathematical analysis of an image frame;

designating a portion of the image frame as a region of interest correlating to the event; and

executing view commands to generate an image frame of the region of interest.