EXTERNAL LIGHT GLARE ASSESSMENT DEVICE, LINE OF SIGHT DETECTION DEVICE AND EXTERNAL LIGHT GLARE ASSESSMENT METHOD

• US 20120170027A1
• Filed: 06/07/2011
• Published: 07/05/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 06/17/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Panasonic Intellectual Property Corporation of America (Panasonic Holdings Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Panasonic Corporation (Panasonic Holdings Corporation)
• Inventors: Tsukizawa, Sotaro, Oka, Kenji
• Granted Patent: US 8,659,751 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 356/124
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 1/00 General purpose image data processing
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2207/10016 Video; Image sequence
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2207/30201 Face
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2207/30268 Vehicle interior
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 7/00 Image analysis
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 7/11 Region-based segmentation
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 40/193 Preprocessing; Feature extraction

Abstract

Disclosed are an ambient light reflection determination apparatus and an ambient light reflection determination method enabling to determine reflection without using an edge and even in a case where luminance of a reflection generating part in eyeglasses is low. In a reflection determination apparatus (100), a luminance histogram calculation section (102) calculates a luminance histogram representing a luminance distribution of an eye area image, a difference calculation section (104) calculates a difference histogram by finding a difference between the two luminance histograms calculated from the two eye area images having different photographing timings, an evaluation value calculation section (105) calculates an evaluation value regarding reflection of ambient light based on the difference histogram and a weight in accordance with luminance, and a reflection determination section (107) determines the reflection of ambient light based on the calculated evaluation value.

Claims

1. A reflection determination apparatus for determining reflection of ambient light to eyeglasses, comprising:

an image acquisition section that acquires an eye area image of a user wearing the eyeglasses;

a luminance histogram calculation section that calculates a luminance histogram representing a luminance distribution of the eye area image;

a difference histogram calculation section that calculates a difference histogram by finding a difference between the two luminance histograms calculated from the two eye area images having different photographing timings;

an evaluation value calculation section that calculates an evaluation value regarding the reflection of ambient light based on the difference histogram and a weight in accordance with luminance; and

a determination section that determines the reflection of ambient light based on the calculated evaluation value.

2. The reflection determination apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the evaluation value calculation section multiplies a value of each bin in the difference histogram by a weight corresponding to luminance of each bin and sums multiplication results for all bins to calculate the evaluation value.

3. The reflection determination apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the determination section determines the reflection of ambient light is generated in a case where the evaluation value calculated at the evaluation value calculation section is a predetermined threshold value or higher predetermined times in a row.

4. A line-of-sight detection apparatus comprising:

the reflection determination apparatus according to claim 3; and

a line-of-sight detection processing section that performs line-of-sight detection processing of the user in a case where it is not determined at the determination section that the reflection of ambient light is generated.

5. A line-of-sight detection apparatus comprising:

an image acquisition section that acquires an eye area image of a user wearing eyeglasses;

a luminance histogram calculation section that calculates a luminance histogram representing a luminance distribution of the eye area image;

a difference histogram calculation section that calculates a difference histogram by finding a difference between the two luminance histograms calculated from the two eye area images having different photographing timings;

an evaluation value calculation section that calculates an evaluation value regarding reflection of ambient light to the eyeglasses based on the difference histogram and a weight in accordance with luminance;

a credibility calculation section that subtracts a normalized evaluation value obtained by normalizing the calculated evaluation value from a predetermined maximum value of credibility to calculate credibility of a pupil detection result in consideration of an influence on pupil detection caused by the reflection of ambient light; and

a line-of-sight detection processing section that performs line-of-sight detection processing of the user and outputs the credibility calculated at the credibility calculation section as well as a line-of-sight detection result.

6. A reflection determination method for determining reflection of ambient light to eyeglasses, comprising:

acquiring an eye area image of a user wearing the eyeglasses;

calculating a luminance histogram representing a luminance distribution of the eye area image;

calculating a difference histogram by finding a difference between the two luminance histograms calculated from the two eye area images having different photographing timings;

calculating an evaluation value regarding the reflection of ambient light based on the difference histogram and a weight in accordance with luminance; and

determining the reflection of ambient light based on the calculated evaluation value.