Canon Inc.

William C Naylor, Jr

David R Brown

Mark Pulver

Michael Webb

Natalie L Kershaw

Display standards in common use for the display of computer or television images on high resolution displays, commonly assume that the output image will be displayed on an output device having a high refresh rate. A high refresh rate is normally required so the viewer does not observe flicker, stilted motion or other visual artifacts if a lower refresh rate were used. It is difficult to drive some displays at a high refresh rate. An apparatus is disclosed for detecting areas of an input image that are changing over time, even where the input image may be subject to some degree of noise. A priority value is determined for providing a measure of this change for use with a system to determine which areas of the image may need changing as a matter of high priority.

Motion detection method and apparatus

In order to display continuous tone colour image on a discrete colour level display, methods of halftoning must be used. The high display rate of colour output devices means that serial methods of real time halftoning are difficult to use. A method and apparatus are disclosed for reducing the speed with which a halftoning method must be performed by performing the halftoning of an output image in parallel by simultaneously error diffusing more than one line of input at a time.

Parallel error diffusion method and apparatus

A process of producing large dither matrices suitable in use in halftoning images is disclosed. This process includes forming an objective function based on the placement of the dither values within the matrix and optimizing the objective function so as to produce an improved matrix. The preferred optimizations process includes the use of simulated annealing with additional optimizations of the simulated annealing process being disclosed.

Dithering optimization techniques

In order to display a continuous tone colour image on a discrete colour level display, methods of halftoning must be used. The high display rate of colour output devices means that serial methods of real time halftoning are difficult to use. A method and apparatus is disclosed for reducing the speed with which a halftoning method must be performed by performing the halftoning of an output image by simultaneously dividing the input image into a number of areas and simultaneously halftoning the areas individually making special provisions for pixels located in the boarder regions of a given area.

Block parallel error diffusion method and apparatus

Display standards in common use for the display of computer or television images on high resolution displays commonly assume that the output image will be displayed on an output device having a high refresh rate. A high refresh rate is normally required so the viewer does not observe flicker, stilted motion or other visual artifacts that one might observe if a lower refresh rate were used. It is difficult to drive some displays at a high refresh rate. An apparatus is disclosed for detecting areas of an input image that are changing over time, even where the input image may be subject to some degree of noise. A priority value is determined for providing a measure of this change for use with a system to determine which areas of the image may need changing as a matter of high priority.

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Mount Kuring-gai, Australia

William C Naylor, Jr