Imaging apparatus and image processing method
AssigneeFUJIFILM Corporation
InventorMasahiko SUGIMOTO
Life of this patent
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Abstract
To track the movement of a common subject contained in a sequence of image frames time-sequentially captured by a digital camera, feature points of the subject are extracted from a first image frame, and corresponding points to the extracted feature point are identified in a second image frame that is captured after the first image frame. When the number of traceable feature points, to which the corresponding points can be identified, is less than a predetermined value, the speed of movement of the subject is judged high, and the shutter speed of the digital camera is set at a higher value.
Claims19
An imaging apparatus that can drive an image sensor to capture a series of image frames time-sequentially, said imaging apparatus comprising:
- a feature point extracting device that extracts a plurality of feature points from a first image frame captured through said image sensor;
- a feature points tracking device for tracking the feature points extracted by said feature point extracting device, said feature point tracking device identifying corresponding points to the extracted feature points in a second image frame captured before or after the first image frame;
- and
- a movement judging device that judges whether the speed of movement of a common subject contained in the first and second image frames is high or low, depending upon the number of traceable feature points to which said feature point tracking device can identify the corresponding points, or the number of untraceable feature points to which said feature point tracking device cannot identify the corresponding points.
An image processing method for tracking the movement of a common subject contained in a series of time-sequentially captured image frames on the basis of image data of the image frames, said image processing method comprising steps of:
- extracting a plurality of feature points of the subject from a first one of the series of image frames;
- identifying corresponding points to the extracted feature point in a second image frame that is captured before or after the first image frame;
- and
- judging whether the speed of movement of the common subject is high or low, depending upon the number of traceable feature points to which the corresponding points can be identified, or the number of untraceable feature points to which the corresponding points cannot be identified.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.