US 5,450,531 AGranted

Resolution enhancement system for combined binary and gray scale halftone images

AssigneeEastman Kodak Company

InventorsYee S. Ng, Hurjay Yeh, Michael A. Pickup

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Abstract

A system for performing edge enhancement of mixed low resolution image files employs a binarization and sorting unit to sort data that is indicative of binary data from the mixed low resolution image input file. The sorted binary data is then supplied to a binary data edge enhancement processor for edge enhancement processing. The output from the binary data edge enhancement processor unit is supplied to a data merger unit along with the original image data. The data merger unit determines whether the original image data was part of a gray-scale image. If the data merger determines the original data is part of a gray-scale image, the original data is supplied as the output of the processing system. If the data merger determines that the original data is binary image data, the output from the binary edge enhancement processor unit is supplied as the output of the processing system.

Claims8

Dependent claims

An image processing system comprising:

first memory means for storing a mixture of inputted image data including first binary image data and first gray-scale image data;
means for sorting the mixture of inputted image data and for generating second binary image data wherein the second binary image data is comprised of a mixture of the first binary image data and third binary image data representing the first gray-scale image data converted to binary image data;
means for performing edge enhancement on the second binary image data to produce gray-scale enhanced binary image data wherein the gray-scale enhanced binary image data includes a mixture of binary image data and second gray-scale image data, said gray-scale enhanced binary image data having a pixel-wise correspondence to the inputted image data;
means for selectively merging and outputting the inputted image data and the gray-scale enhanced binary image data as outputted image data, the outputted image data including:
the gray-scale enhanced binary image data selected as output by said means for selectively merging and outputting if the gray-scale enhanced binary image data pixel-wise corresponds to the first binary image data in the inputted image data;
and
the inputted image data selected as output by said means for selectively merging and outputting if the inputted image data pixel-wise corresponds to the first gray-scale image data.

4 more elements

An image processing method comprising the steps of:

storing in a first memory a mixture of inputted image data including first binary image data and first gray-scale image data;
sorting the mixture of inputted image data and generating second binary image data wherein the second binary image data is comprised of a mixture of the first binary image data and third binary image data representing the first gray-scale image data converted to binary image data;
performing an edge enhancement operation on the second binary image data to produce gray-scale enhanced binary image data wherein the gray-scale enhanced binary image data includes a mixture of binary image data and second gray-scale image data, said gray-scale enhanced binary image data having a pixel-wise correspondence to the inputted image data;
selectively merging and outputting the inputted image data and the gray-scale enhanced binary image data as outputted image data, the outputted image data including;
the gray-scale enhanced binary image data selected as output in the step of selectively merging and outputting if the gray-scale enhanced binary image data pixel-wise corresponds to the first binary image data in the inputted image data;
and
the inputted image data selected as output by said means for selectively merging and outputting if the inputted image data pixel-wise corresponds to the first gray-scale image data.

4 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.