Method and apparatus for blending images

A method for blending images, comprising:

• aligning a reference image and an input image through image alignment based on an nth region of interest (ROI) which is detected at a previous stage;
• detecting another ROI associated with an incompletely aligned region in the aligned image;
• blending the aligned image in the other ROI and an (n+1)th blended image, which is input from a next stage, in a region outside the other ROI;
• and
• outputting the last blended image to the previous stage.

An image blender, comprising:

• an image aligning unit configured to align a reference image and an input image through ROI-based image alignment;
• an ROI detecting unit configured to detect an ROI associated with an incompletely aligned region by detecting motion in an aligned image output from the image alignment unit;
• a weight calculating unit configured to calculate a plurality of weights which are attenuated depending on a spatial distance from a boundary of the ROI detected by the ROI detecting unit;
• and
• an image blending unit comprising a processor, the image blending unit configured to blend an aligned image output from the image aligning unit and a reference image according to the weights which are calculated by the weight calculating unit.

An image blender, comprising:

• an image aligning unit configured to align a reference image and an input image through image alignment, based on an nth ROI which is detected at a previous stage;
• an ROI detecting unit configured to detect another ROI associated with an incompletely aligned region, based on motion detection in an aligned image output from the image aligning unit;
• and
• an image blending unit comprising a processor, the image blending unit configured to:
• blend the aligned input image in the other ROI and an (n+1)th blended image, which is input from a next stage, in a region outside the other ROI;
• and
• output the last blended image to the previous stage.

An image blending apparatus, comprising:

• is a plurality of image blenders, at least two of the plurality of image blenders comprising:
• an image aligning unit configured to align a reference image and an input image through image alignment, based on an nth ROI which is detected at a previous stage;
• an ROI detecting unit configured to detect another ROI associated with an incompletely aligned region, based on motion detection in an aligned image output from the image aligning unit;
• and
• an image blending unit comprising a processor, the image blending unit configured to:
• blend the aligned image in the other ROI and an (n+1)th blended image, which is input from a next stage, in a region outside the other ROI;
• and
• output the last blended image to the previous stage.