Method and apparatus for correcting motion distortion and lens distortion of image-taking video signals

Abstract

A method and an apparatus for correcting distortions of image-taking video signals and an apparatus for correcting distortions are provided. The apparatus and method thereof are capable of reducing distortion generated in a taken image caused by a hand movement and by a characteristic of an image-taking lens in an image-taking apparatus employing an image-taking device of an X-Y address type. The apparatus has a lens-distortion correction quantity generation section to generate a first correction quantity set in advance as a correction quantity to be used for correcting a distortion, caused by the image-taking lens characteristic, of a taken image at a pixel position on the device on the basis of information on the pixel position. The screen segment of the taken image is divided into many image sub-segments. For each of the image sub-segments, the positional change rate of the device is detected. In each of the image sub-segments, a second correction quantity is then computed on the basis of the rate of the positional change of the device detected for each of the image sub-segments. Finally, the distortion is corrected on the basis of a sum of the first (generated by the lens-distortion correction quantity generation section as a correction quantity for a member subjected to a process to correct the distortion) and second correction quantity.