Tone based non-smooth detection
AssigneeAmbarella International LP
InventorElliot N. Linzer
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An apparatus includes a raw image pipeline comprising a first circuit and a second circuit. The first circuit of the raw image pipeline may be configured to distinguish between smooth picture noisy areas and non-smooth clean areas of an image by performing tone based non-smooth detection on data of the image to obtain an adjusted non-smoothness value for at least one area comprising a plurality of pixels of the image. The second circuit of the raw image pipeline may be configured to adjust one or more of noise reduction filtering or sharpening filtering performed on the at least one area of the image based on the adjusted non-smoothness value.
Claims20
An apparatus comprising:
- a first circuit of a raw image pipeline to distinguish between smooth picture noisy areas and non-smooth clean areas of an image by performing tone based non-smooth detection on data of said image to (i) compute a local average value and a non-smoothness value for at least one area comprising a plurality of pixels of said image, and (ii) compute an adjusted non-smoothness value for the at least one area of said image by adjusting said non-smoothness value for the at least one area of said image using at least one value selected from a lookup table based on said local average value for the at least one area of said image;
- and
- a second circuit of said raw image pipeline to adjust one or more of noise reduction filtering or sharpening filtering performed on said at least one area of said image in said raw image pipeline based on said adjusted non-smoothness value.
A method of processing image data in a raw image pipeline to improve an ability of a camera chip to distinguish between smooth picture noisy areas and non-smooth clean areas, the method comprising the steps of:
- (A) using a first hardware circuit of said raw image pipeline to measure a non-smoothness characteristic for at least one area comprising a plurality of pixels of an image and compute a non-smoothness value for the at least one area of said image;
- (B) using a second hardware circuit of said raw image pipeline to measure a pixel value for each of the pixels of the at least one area of said image and compute a local average value for the at least one area of said image based on the measured pixel values for the pixels of the at least one area of said image;
- (C) computing an adjusted non-smoothness value for the at least one area by adjusting said non-smoothness value for the at least one area of said image using at least one value selected from a lookup table based on said local average value for the at least one area of said image;
- and
- (D) applying one or more of noise reduction filtering or sharpening filtering on the at least one area of said image in said raw image pipeline based on said adjusted non-smoothness value.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.