Sarnoff Corporation

Lambert Ernest Wixson

Stephen Charles Hsu

Michael Wade Hansen

Douglas Fremont Dixon

Deepam Mishra

Keith James Hanna

Harpreet Singh Sawhney

Rakesh Kumar

Peter Jeffrey Burt

Robert G Bassman

Vincent Paragano

Jayakrishnan Kumar Eledath

Gooitzen Siemen Van Der Wal

Peter James Coyle

Bhavesh B Bhatt

Shmuel Peleg

Robert Mandelbaum

Michael Raymond Piacentino

Bill J Call

Robert Mandlebaum

Joshua R Herman

A recognition system which obtains and analyzes images of at least one object in a scene comprising a wide field of view (WFOV) imager which is used to capture an image of the scene and to locate the object and a narrow field of view (NFOV) imager which is responsive to the location information provided by the WFOV imager and which is used to capture an image of the object, the image of the object having a higher resolution than the image captured by the WFOV imager is disclosed. In one embodiment, a system that obtains and analyzes images of the irises of eyes of a human or animal in an image with little or no active involvement by the human or animal is disclosed. A method for obtaining and analyzing images of at least one object in a scene comprising capturing a wide field of view image of the object to locate the object in the scene; and then using a narrow field of view imager responsive to the location information provided in the capturing step to obtain higher resolution image of the object is also disclosed.

Fully automated iris recognition system utilizing wide and narrow fields of view

A method and apparatus for detecting objects from a sequence of images of a scene containing an object by using two distinct methods for object detection. One is suited for well-lit scenes (e.g., daytime), while the other is suitable for poorly-lit scenes (e.g., nighttime) where the objects have lights mounted on them. Further, the method and apparatus are adaptive to the image statistics of the objects being detected, and can be programmed to filter out &ldquo;weak&rdquo; detections that lie below a certain percentile in the observed statistical distribution of image measures. The specific percentile is determined based on whether the scene has been determined to be well- or poorly-lit and whether it contains shadows or not.

Method and apparatus for image-based object detection and tracking

A method for fixating a camera, mounted on a motorized mount, on a target point. The method includes receiving a plurality of images representative of a scene; selecting, within the plurality of images, a first display reference image containing the target point at a first coordinate location; estimating, in a current image within the plurality of images, a transformation that maps the current image to the first display reference image; estimating a second coordinate location of the target point in the current image using the transformation; computing an image slip between the target point in the current image and the target point in the first display reference image; converting the image slip into an angular correction for fixating the camera; modifying the angular correction by using closed-loop control with the motorized mount; and warping the current image using the transformation to align the current image with the first display reference image. This warping step provides a stable view of the scene even in the presence of camera movements that cannot be eliminated using mechanical stabilization, and in the presence of motor control lags and oscillations due to measurement and actuator latencies.

Method and apparatus for fixating a camera on a target point using image alignment

A microscopy system comprising a microscope including a stage, at least one magnifying lens, and a lens controller, a video capture device coupled to the microscope capturing a plurality of images of an object on the stage of the microscope and a processing subsystem receiving the plurality of images from the video capture device, in which the processing subsystem generates at least one resultant image as a function of the plurality of images. The at least one resultant image generated by the processing subsystem may include a mosaic, submosaic or a sequence of mosaics.

Microscopy system utilizing a plurality of images for enhanced image processing capabilities

Method and apparatus for detecting salient motion in an image sequence using optical flow. For each pixel in an image, frame-to-frame optical flow information are collected over time for computing a rough estimate of the total image distance traveled by each pixel. Specifically, an optical flow field is generated for every two successive image frames. The resulting optical flow field is applied to warp one or more intermediate measure images that contain intermediate cumulative measurements. The warped measure images for an image sequence are used to compute a sum of frame-to-frame optical flow fields for the image sequence to yield a cumulative flow field that can be used to generate a measure of salience for each image point.

Method and apparatus for detecting salient motion using optical flow

Apparatus for image processing a sequence of images containing a parallel-pipelined image processor comprised of image memories, a pyramid processing circuit, an arithmetic logic unit, a crossbar switch for video routing through the various components of the processor, signal processors to provide hardware programming through a global bus and also perform image processing operations. Images can be passed directly from the crossbar switch to internal static RAM of the signal processors through a first-in, first-out interface at full video rates.

Parallel-pipelined image processing system

A method and apparatus for determining certain ambient conditions in a scene by analyzing a sequence of images that represent the scene. The apparatus uses only image information to determine scene illumination, or the presence of shadows, fog, smoke, or haze by comparing properties of detected objects, averaged over a finite video sequence, against properties of the reference image of the scene as that scene would appear without any objects present. Such a reference image is constructed in a manner similar to time-averaging successive camera images.

Method and apparatus for determining ambient conditions from an image

A locally-adaptive method and apparatus for constructing a reference image containing only the background from an image sequence containing moving or temporarily-stationary objects. Specifically, the apparatus contains a sample mask selector and a reference updater. The selector generates a mask which is used by the updated to perform updating of a reference image using only portions of the input image that contain background imagery. The updater enhances the masking function using a statistical analysis to avoid updating pixels using non-background imagery.

Method and apparatus for generating a reference image from an image

Method and apparatus for processing a sequence of images to detect object movement within the sequence. Specifically, the method comprises the steps of: (a) supplying a sequence of image frames; (b) initializing a reference image that contains image information regarding stationary objects within a scene represented by the sequence of images; (c) supplying a next image frame which temporally follows the sequence of image frames; (d) comparing the next image to the reference image to produce a motion image representing motion information regarding movement of objects within the scene; (e) updating the reference image with information within the next image that represents stationary objects within the scene; and (f) repeating steps (c), (d), and (e) for each next image supplied. The method is implemented by image processing apparatus. A specific embodiment of the method and apparatus is a traffic monitoring system that identifies vehicles in varying illumination levels and eliminates erroneous identification of non-physical movement in the scene such as shadows and headlight reflections.

Growing community of inventors

Rocky Hill, NJ, United States of America

Lambert Ernest Wixson