Slice scan imaging system and methods of use
AssigneeLockheed Martin Corporation
InventorsAlexander M. Elhage, Michael Riess
Life of this patent
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Abstract
The disclosure is directed to systems and methods for image capturing technologies and, more particularly, to a slice scan imaging system and respective processes to achieve high quality images. The method can be implemented in a computing device, which includes: capturing multiple lines of an image in a single slice; capturing multiple slices; stitching together the multiple slices by aligning common features of the images of a previous slice with a successive slice; and blending together the stitched together multiple slices.
Claims19
A method implemented in a computing device, comprising:
- capturing multiple lines of an image in a single slice as an object is moving past a camera;
- capturing multiple slices which have common overlapping features of the image;
- stitching together the multiple slices by aligning the common overlapping features of the image of a previous slice with the image of a successive slice to correct for motion of the object, between the multiple slices, as it moves past the camera and to form a single mosaic image of an object;
- and
- blending together the stitched together multiple slices, wherein
- the slices are shingled together to form the single mosaic image of the object, prior to the blending,
- the shingling together of the multiple slices comprises aligning successive images of each slice in order correct for any rocking motion of the object in between slices, and
- the alignment is a shift or offset of each slice with respect to a previous slice.
A method implemented in a computing device, comprising:
- capturing multiple lines of an image in a single slice as an object is moving past a camera;
- capturing multiple slices which have common overlapping features of the image;
- stitching together the multiple slices by aligning the common overlapping features of the image of a previous slice with the image of a successive slice to correct for motion of the object, between the multiple slices, as it moves past the camera and to form a single mosaic image of an object;
- and
- blending together the stitched together multiple slices, wherein:
- the camera is a slice scan camera which simultaneously captures multiple lines of the object in a single slice and captures the multiple slices having the common overlapping features;
- the stitching together the multiple slices includes an edge to edge process comprising aligning together the multiple slices at their edges by detecting transitioning features including different shades or colors of the image at the edges of each slice that are to be aligned together between different slices of the multiple slices;
- and further comprising:
- increasing a depth of field of the image which includes:
- a blurry image and a focused image are blurred uniformly and each of the slices are deconvoluted to bring a large range of the images back into focus using a wavefront coding technique,
- after bringing the image back into focus, the multiple slices are then stitched together to form the single mosaic image;
- and
- reducing noise in the image to correct for the motion, which includes:
- prior to or after the stitching together, values of matched features in the image which are common between successive slices are averaged together to reduce any noise from any single slice.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.