The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Mar. 07, 2000
Filed:
Feb. 14, 1997
Tsuhan Chen, Middletown, NJ (US);
Barin Geoffry Haskell, Tinton Falls, NJ (US);
Cassandra Turner Swain, Aberdeen, NJ (US);
AT&T Corp, New York, NY (US);
Abstract
A method and apparatus for generating region frames from video frames are disclosed which employs an industry standard encoder to lessen the negative impact on the quality of the transmitted video sequence while consuming fewer bits. The invention utilizes image segmentation and color replacement techniques to create the region frames. Each region frame includes a subject region, zero or more previously segmented regions and zero or more non-subject regions. The subject region is defined by the pixels of the original video frame. The previously segmented regions and non-subject regions are assigned replacement pixels P.sub.n,y and C.sub.n, respectively. The replacement pixel C.sub.n is chosen to indicate a color that is not likely to be confused with any color in the subject region R.sub.n. The replacement pixels P.sub.n,y are chosen such that the compression ratio of the region frame data is maximized. Using the region frames, content based scalability can be provided without the need for special encoders and/or channels having a wider bandwidth. Also, color artifacts associated with the segmenting process are removed by color clipping or gray-level erosion.