Method and apparatus for processing digital images to suppress their noise and enhancing their sharpness
First Claim
1. A method of processing digital images to suppress their noise and enhance their sharpness, comprising the steps of:
- performing a sharpness enhancing process on original image data to generate sharpness enhanced image data;
performing a smoothing process on said original image data to generate smoothed image data;
subtracting the smoothed image data from said sharpness enhanced image data to extract a component consisting of both edges and noise;
performing nonlinear transformation on said edge/noise containing component to separate a noise component and performing a subdividing process on the resulting noise component to produce a subdivided noise component;
separately detecting an edge component from said original image data and determining weighting data for an edge region and a noise region from the detected edge component;
weighting said edge/noise containing component with the weighting data for said edge region to produce an edge enhancing component; and
subtracting said subdivided noise component multiplied by a factor from said sharpness enhanced image data while adding said edge enhanced component multiplied by another factor to said sharpness enhanced image data so as to generate processed image data.
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Abstract
A method of processing digital images to suppress their noise and enhance their sharpness. The method of suppressing noise and enhancing their sharpness includes steps of: (a) performing a sharpness enhancing process on original image data to generate sharpness enhance image data also performing a smoothing process on original image data to generate smoothed image data; (b) subtracting the smoothed image data from sharpness enhanced image data to extract a component consisting of both edges and noise; (c) performing nonlinear transformation on edge/noise containing component to separate a noise component and performing a subdividing process on the resulting noise component to produce a subdivided noise component; (d) separately detecting an edge component from original image data and determining weighting data for an edge region and a noise region from the detected edge component; (e) weighting edge/noise containing component with the weighting data for edge region to produce an edge enhancing component; and (f) subtracting subdivided noise component multiplied by a factor from sharpness enhanced image data while adding edge enhance component multiplied by another factor to sharpness enhanced image data so as to generate processed image data. The effect of the method is to process digital images to suppress their noise and enhance their sharpness.
220 Citations
18 Claims
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1. A method of processing digital images to suppress their noise and enhance their sharpness, comprising the steps of:
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performing a sharpness enhancing process on original image data to generate sharpness enhanced image data; performing a smoothing process on said original image data to generate smoothed image data; subtracting the smoothed image data from said sharpness enhanced image data to extract a component consisting of both edges and noise; performing nonlinear transformation on said edge/noise containing component to separate a noise component and performing a subdividing process on the resulting noise component to produce a subdivided noise component; separately detecting an edge component from said original image data and determining weighting data for an edge region and a noise region from the detected edge component; weighting said edge/noise containing component with the weighting data for said edge region to produce an edge enhancing component; and subtracting said subdivided noise component multiplied by a factor from said sharpness enhanced image data while adding said edge enhanced component multiplied by another factor to said sharpness enhanced image data so as to generate processed image data. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13)
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14. An apparatus for processing digital images to suppress their noise and enhance their sharpness, comprising:
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sharpness enhancing means for generating sharpness enhanced image data from original image data; smoothing means for generating smoothed image data from said original image data; extracting means for extracting a component containing both edges and noise from said sharpness enhanced image data and the resulting smoothed image data; weighting data computing means for calculating weighting data for the edge and noise regions of said original image date; separating means for separating a noise component from said edge/noise containing component; subdividing means for producing a subdivided noise component from the separated noise component; means of weighting by the weighting data for said edge region so as to provide an edge enhancing component from said edge/noise containing component; and processed image data computing means for calculating processed image data from said sharpness enhancing image data, said subdivided noise component and said edge enhancing component. - View Dependent Claims (15, 16, 17, 18)
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Specification