Minolta Company, Ltd.

Konica-minolta Holdings, Inc.

Konica Minolta Opto, Inc.

Konica Minolta Advanced Layers, Inc.

Koichi Kamon

Kazuchika Sato

Tetsuya Katagiri

Toshio Norita

Jun Minakuti

Takashi Kondo

Hiroshi Uchino

Eiichi Ide

Fumiya Yagi

Shinya Matsuda

Jun Takayama

Makoto Miyazaki

Hideki Tanabe

Hiroyuki Okada

Hiroshi Murakami

Hideo Kumashiro

Tsuyoshi Iwamoto

Masayuki Kusuda

Osamu Toyama

Noriyuki Okisu

Shigehiro Miyatake

Tomokazu Kakumoto

Po-Chieh Hung

Junya Wakahara

Shigeaki Tochimoto

Sei Koh

Eiiehi Ide

Tetuya Katagiri

An imaging device is provided with an imaging element. The imaging element has a sensitive wavelength region including an infrared wavelength region, and selectively including a visible wavelength region, and is composed of at least three types of pixels having spectral sensitivities different from each other. The imaging device generates a color image, based on a luminance signal including an infrared wavelength component, and based on a color-difference signal that has been generated based on a visible wavelength component in original image data. The luminance signal including an infrared wavelength component is generated, based on a signal obtained by compressing the dynamic range of original image data including at least three types of original image components acquired by an imaging operation of the imaging element.

Imaging device having a color image generator generating a color image using edge data and a fake color suppressing coefficient

An image processing device includes a corrector for performing an optical correction of correcting a distortion of an image by interpolating image data of the distorted picked-up image resulting from an optical characteristic of an image pickup section, and locally changing a resolution of the image; and a compressor for performing a dynamic range compression of compressing a dynamic range of the image data by extracting an illumination component from the image data based on a space frequency of the image, and compressing the extracted illumination component, wherein the compressor performs the dynamic range compression with respect to image data of an after-correction-image to be obtained after the optical correction is performed by the corrector.

Image processing device, image processing method, and image pickup apparatus

A luminance signal and a color information signal having high S/N ratios are generated by combining a visible luminance image component and an infrared image component at an appropriate ratio according to brightness of a subject such as brightness on a sunny day or brightness in darkness. An image pickup elementpicks up a ye image component Dye, an R image component DR, an infrared image component DBlk and a luminance image component DW. An evaluation value calculatorcalculates an evaluation value eDW and an evaluation value eDBlk by adding pixel values of the luminance image component DW and pixel values of the infrared image component DBlk in a local area, and calculates an evaluation value e (=eDW&#x2212;eDBlk). A factor determinerdetermines weighting factors k, kw from the evaluation value e. A signal generatorweights the luminance image component by the weighting factor k, weights the visible luminance image component by the weighting factor kw, combines the luminance image component and the visible luminance image component to calculate a luminance signal dY, and also calculates color signals dR, dG and dB.

Image pickup apparatus and image pickup element

Provided is an image inputting apparatus wherein luminance signals having a high S/N ratio can be generated even during nighttime with a small quantity of photons. An imaging element images image components. A color signal generating section generates color signals from the image components. A color space conversion section converts the color signals into a color space that includes luminance signals and color difference signals. The color space conversion section calculates a luminance signal obtained by adding the image components, as the luminance signal of the color space to be converted.

Image input apparatus

To convert a pixel value obtained from a non-reference photoelectric conversion characteristic into a pixel value obtained from a reference photoelectric conversion characteristic without variation, and to prevent generation of fixed pattern noise in an image. An image sensoris constituted of pixels having photoelectric conversion characteristics, in which a linear characteristic is on the low luminance side with respect to an inflection point, and a logarithmic characteristic is on the high luminance side with respect to the inflection point. A conversion information storagestores, as conversion information, coefficients 'c', 'd', &#x201c;e&#x201d;, and &#x201c;f&#x201d; of two kinds of linear functions (y=c&#xb7;log(x)+d, and y=e&#xb7;log(x)+f), which are approximation equations expressing the logarithmic characteristic of each of the pixels, where y designates a pixel value, and x designates a luminance value of incident light. A linear converterconverts a pixel value obtained from the logarithmic characteristic into a pixel value obtained from the linear characteristic by using the approximation equations specified by the coefficients.

Imaging device having a characteristic converting section

An image sensing apparatus includes: an image sensor which generates an electrical signal commensurate with an amount of incident light, and has a photoelectric conversion characteristic comprised of a linear characteristic area where the electrical signal is outputted after being linearly converted in relation to the amount of incident light, and a logarithmic characteristic area where the electrical signal is outputted after being logarithmically converted in relation to the amount of incident light; an exposure evaluation value detector which detects an exposure evaluation value based on luminance information acquired from a subject in sensing an image of the subject; and an exposure controller which acquires a setting value for exposure based on the exposure evaluation value detected by the exposure evaluation value detector to control exposure of the image sensing apparatus, wherein the exposure controller determines a subject luminance for exposure setting based on the exposure evaluation value, and controls the exposure in such a manner that an output of the image sensor corresponding to the subject luminance for exposure setting is obtained from the linear characteristic area of the image sensor.

Image sensing apparatus with exposure controller

In an image processing device, an image processing method, and an image pickup apparatus according to an aspect of the invention, a compression characteristic is generated based on one of multiple smoothed images to be generated based on an input image, and a compressed base component image having a smaller dynamic range than the dynamic range of a base component image is generated by using the compression characteristic. The image processing device, the image processing method, and the image pickup apparatus enable to more advantageously define a proper compression characteristic, and compress the dynamic range of the input image in a simplified manner and with high quality, as compared with the background art.

In a solid-state image sensing device, a method for driving the solid-state image sensing device, and an image sensing system incorporated with the solid-state image sensing device of the invention, pixel signals having two or more different photoelectric conversion characteristics to be outputted from a pixel section are amplified by using an analog gain with respect to each of the photoelectric conversion characteristics for outputting the amplified pixel signals. This enables to reproduce an image having a wide dynamic range while suppressing lowering of the frame rate.

Solid-state image sensing device, method for driving solid-state image sensing device, and image sensing system incorporated with solid-state image sensing device

Image sensing apparatus

An image sensing apparatus includes: an image sensing section for sensing an image of a subject; a detector for detecting a luminance of the subject; a compressor for compressing a dynamic range of the subject image; and a controller for controlling a compression characteristic to be used in compressing the dynamic range based on a detection result of the detector.

Image sensing apparatus and image processing method

An image sensing apparatus including an image sensor having a first area and a second area and a gradation converter for applying a gradation conversion to an image signal is provided with a gradation conversion LUT storage storing at least two kinds of gradation conversion information. The image sensing apparatus is also provided with a gradation conversion information rewriting section for rewriting the gradation conversion information into new gradation conversion information. There can be provided an image sensing apparatus capable of carrying out a precise gradation conversion even in the case that the inflection point between the first area and the second area of the image sensor constantly changes.

Image sensing apparatus, image sensing system, and operating program product for image sensing system

An illumination component extractor is operable to extract an illumination component from input image data by: performing a smoothing process a certain number of times to generate a plurality of smooth image data having resolutions different from one another from the input image data, the smoothing process including an operation of filtering the input image data with use of a low-pass filter having a predetermined size and an operation of downsampling the filtered input image data; and performing an inverse-smoothing process a certain number of times, the inverse-smoothing process including an operation of replacing an edge portion of a smooth image data having a lower resolution with a smooth image data having a higher resolution, and an operation of upsampling the replaced smooth image data. The input image data is color image data which has been obtained by an image sensor including a number of pixels having different spectral sensitivities.

There is described an image capturing apparatus, which makes it possible to unify the gradation characteristics all over the captured image into the same characteristic. The image capturing apparatus includes an image sensor that is provided with a first photoelectric conversion characteristic, a second photoelectric conversion characteristic being different from the first photoelectric conversion characteristic and a third photoelectric conversion characteristic being a transient characteristic between the first photoelectric conversion characteristic and the second photoelectric conversion characteristic; and a characteristic converting section to convert the first photoelectric conversion characteristic, the second photoelectric conversion characteristic and the third photoelectric conversion characteristic to a reference photoelectric conversion characteristic. The first photoelectric conversion characteristic is a linear characteristic, the second photoelectric conversion characteristic is a logarithmic characteristic and the reference photoelectric conversion characteristic is either a linear or a logarithmic characteristic.

Image capturing apparatus including an image sensor having three photoelectric conversion characteristics with each corresponding to a range of luminance intensity

An image sensing apparatus includes: an image sensing device for sensing light representing a subject image; a first component extractor for extracting a first component having a predetermined frequency out of a photographic image obtained by the image sensing device; a second component extractor for extracting a second component having a frequency higher than the frequency of the first component out of the photographic image; a compressor for compressing a dynamic range of the first component extracted by the first component extractor with a predetermined compression ratio; an image generator for generating an image based on a compressed first component obtained by compressing the dynamic range of the first component by the compressor, and the second component extracted by the second component extractor; and a compression correction coefficient calculator for calculating a compression correction coefficient used in compressing the first component, using the second component extracted by the second component extractor, wherein the compressor determines the compression ratio in such a manner that the larger compression correction coefficient increases the compression ratio based on the compression correction coefficient calculated by the compression correction coefficient calculator, and compresses the dynamic range of the first component based on the determined compression ratio.

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Otokuni-gun, Japan

Koichi Kamon