Animal identification system based on irial granule analysis
AssigneeOki Electric Industry Co., Ltd.
InventorsMasahiko Suzaki, Yuji Kuno
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An animal identification system is provided which is designed to determine outlines of a pupil and irial granule in an input image of an eye of an animal to be identified, apply an arc to a lower portion of the outline of the pupil, turns back the arc from a principal axis to define a reference axis, and maps an image of the irial granule into a polar coordinate system whose origin is the center of the reference axis. The shape of the irial granule corrected in the above manner is compared with a reference shape stored in a memory to determine whether the input image arises from the same animal or not.
Claims38
An animal identification apparatus comprising:
- an outline extracting circuit that extracts from an image of an eye of an animal to be identified including a pupil and an irial granule an outline of said pupil;
- an arc application processing circuit that determines an arc approximate to a specified portion of said extracted outline;
- an irial granule deforming circuit that deforms the irial granule in said image according to the degree of deformation of said arc up to a reference level;
- and
- a storage that registers data on said deformed irial granule of the animal to be registered.
An animal identification method comprising the steps of:
- extracting from an image of an eye of an animal to be identified including a pupil and an irial granule an outline of said pupil;
- applying an approximate arc to a specified portion of said extracted outline;
- deforming the irial granule in said image according to the degree of deformation of said arc up to a reference level;
- and
- registering data on said deformed irial granule of the animal in a storage.
An animal eye image processing apparatus designed to process an image of an eye of an animal including a pupil and irial granule comprising:
- a pupilary rectangle extracting circuit that determines an area in said image showing the smallest gray level of pixels representing said image as an area of said pupil and extracts a rectangular area including said pupilary area;
- and
- pupilary vertical center determining means for projecting a gray level of each pixel in said rectangular area in a horizontal direction to determine an area in said pupilary area showing the smallest frequency as a central position of said pupilary area in a vertical direction.
An animal eye image processing apparatus designed to process an image of an eye including a pupilary area and an irial granule area in an iris area comprising:
- first outline extracting means for determining gray level differences between pixels forming said pupilary area and said irial granule area to extract outlines of both the areas;
- and
- second outline extracting means for determining gray level differences between pixels forming said iris area and said irial granule area to extract outlines of both the areas.
An animal eye image processing method wherein using an image picked up from an eye of an animal having an irial granule, a central position of a pupil is determined, comprising the steps of:
- setting a rectangular area surrounding an pupilary area using the fact that the pupil has the lowest gray level;
- and
- projecting gray levels of the rectangular area in a horizontal direction to determine a central position of the pupil in a vertical direction.
An animal eye image processing method wherein from an image picked up from an eye of an animal having an irial granule, an area of the irial granule is extracted, comprising:
- a first outline extraction step of extracting a first outline of the irial granule on a boundary side of a pupil and the irial granule based on an average gray level difference between the pupil and the irial granule;
- and
- a second outline extraction step of extracting a second outline of the irial granule on a boundary side of an iris and the irial granule based on an average gray level difference between the iris and the irial granule,
- wherein information on the first and second outlines is provided as area information on the irial granule.
An animal eye image processing apparatus comprising:
- a pupilary rectangle extracting circuit that extracts from a captured image of an eye of an animal having an irial granule a rectangular area surrounding the iri al granule;
- and
- an irial granule area extracting circuit that divides the rectangular area determined by said pupilary rectangle extracting circuit in a lateral direction into image segments and determines an outline of the irial granule in each of the image segments.
An animal eye image processing method comprising the steps of:
- extracting from an image derived by capturing an eye of an animal having an irial granule a rectangular area surrounding the irial granule;
- and
- dividing said rectangular area in a lateral direction into image segments and determining an outline of the irial granule in each of the image segments.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.