Method of obtaining an image

Abstract

A method of creating an image 4 obtained from say a camera 1 to obtain a substantially linear representation of the brightness of the image includes, for each of a set of pixels (x, y) in a two dimensional array, calculating, in a computer 3, an estimate of the true image intensity (ixy) as a weighted average of n samples of the apparent image intensity (νn,xy). This is calculated as: 1 i ^ xy = ∑ n ⁢ ⁢ ( w n , xy ⁡ ( v n , xy - C KT n ) ) ∑ n ⁢ w n , xy = 1 K ⁢ ∑ n ⁢ ⁢ ( w n , xy ⁡ ( v n , xy - C T n ) ) ∑ n ⁢ w n , xy where νn,xy is the apparent intensity measured, Tn is the exposure time, K is the gain of the system, C is an offset and wn,xy is a weighting factor which is defined to maximise the signal to noise ratio and discard insignificant, that is saturated or near zero, values. Thereafter each of the values îxy is saved together with other data representing the image 4, before the image is output to a display 5 or to a printing device.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.