JP2000324365A - Picture processor - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a device for outputting picture information in the format of picture data by correcting flicker by detecting correction data from latest input picture components and reference picture components, and correcting a picture to be corrected by using the correction data. SOLUTION: A picture component extracting part 1 extracts latest input picture components 7 by using input picture data 6, and outputs them to a reference picture component generating part 2 and a difference detecting part 3. The reference picture component generating part 2 generates reference picture components 8 by using picture components in several frames inputted before the latest input picture components 7, and outputs them to a difference detecting part 3. The difference detecting part 3 detects correction data 9 from the reference picture components 8 and the latest input picture components 7, and outputs the correction data 9 to an input picture correcting part 5. On the other hand, the input picture data 6 are stored in an input picture storing part 4 until the correction data 9 are prepared, and corrected by an input picture correcting part 5 after the detection of the correction data 9, and picture data 10 to be corrected are outputted to the outside part.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an image processing technique for suppressing flickering of an image caused by illumination of a fluorescent light or the like.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In recent years, image processing apparatuses called video conference systems and video phones have been used in various situations. However, the image processing apparatus has several problems, one of which is as follows.

Since the above-described image processing apparatus transfers image data, image data having high transfer compression efficiency is required. Good compression efficiency described herein means that an image having a high correlation between frames is desirable.
However, the images used in the above apparatuses are mainly indoors. When the room is indoors, there is a high possibility that the image is illuminated by a fluorescent light or the like, and flicker occurs in an image illuminated by the illumination of the fluorescent light or the like.

The reason is that the frequency of one field constituting an image is different from the frequency of illumination. For this reason, the luminance of the illumination differs for each frame, and appears on the screen as flicker. As a result, the image becomes an image having a different luminance value for each frame, which causes a reduction in the correlation between the frames, resulting in poor compression efficiency.

At present, various schemes have been proposed for removing flickers caused by the above-mentioned lighting or the like. As a typical example, in the field of a photographing apparatus, flicker is removed by an electronic shutter provided in a video camera or the like. This involves synchronizing the electronic shutter with the illumination and changing the frequency to several tens of thousands.
145669 proposes a television camera device equipped with the above processing.

[0006]

Conventionally, when flicker has occurred due to illumination or the like, the flicker has been removed by using an electronic shutter or the like as described above. However, flicker cannot be removed by the above-described method when image information already containing flicker is input as image data. Note that the above-described image data indicates a sequence of a format in which image information is transferred as an image signal. Therefore, a flicker removing device for the case where image information exists as image data has been considered.

[0007] A first object of the present invention is to propose an image processing apparatus which corrects flicker and outputs the image data in the form of image data when the image information is in the form of image data as described above.

A second object of the present invention is to reduce the amount of calculation at the time of correction processing in the image processing apparatus.

[0009]

According to the present invention, there is provided a means for extracting an image component in an input image, and a means for generating a reference image component from extracted image components of past several frames input before the latest input image. Means for detecting a difference value, that is, correction data from the latest input image component and the reference image component; means for storing input image data while detecting the correction data; and storing in the storage unit using the correction data. Means for correcting and outputting the corrected image to be corrected.

[0010]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below.

First, a first embodiment will be described with reference to FIG. As shown, the first embodiment includes an image component extraction unit 1, a reference image component generation unit 2, a difference detection unit 3, an input image storage unit 4, and an input image correction unit 5. The data flow of the first embodiment, which is the basic configuration of the present invention, will be described below. As shown, input image data 6 input from the outside is connected to an image component extraction unit 1 and an input image storage unit 4. First, the image component extraction unit 1 extracts the latest input image component 7 using the image data 6 and outputs the latest input image component 7 to the reference image component generation unit 2 and the difference detection unit 3.

The reference image component generation unit 2 generates a reference image component 8 using image components of the past several frames input before the latest input image component 7, and a difference detection unit 3
Output to In the difference detection unit 3, the reference image component 8
Then, a difference value, that is, correction data 9 is detected from the latest input image component 7 output from the image component extraction unit 1 and output to the input image correction unit 5.

On the other hand, as described above, the input image data 6 input from the outside is stored in the input image storage unit 4 until the correction data 9 is created, and after the correction data 9 is detected, the input image correction unit In step 5, a correction process is performed, and the correction target image data 10 is output to the outside. Next, a detailed description of each processing unit will be described.

First, the image component extracting unit 1 sequentially adds the pixel values of the input image data 6 to be input on a pixel-by-pixel basis, and extracts an average pixel value per pixel as an image component when all of one screen is input. I do. The latest input image component 7 extracted here is output to the reference image component generator 2 and the difference detector 3.

Next, an example of the internal configuration of the reference image component generator 2 will be described with reference to FIG. As shown in the figure, the reference image component generation unit 2 includes five storage units 12 to 16 and an averaging unit 17. The storage unit described here may be a single storage unit, or a storage unit of several tens of units may be used, and an arbitrary number optimal for generating reference image components may be prepared. FIG. 11 shows an example in which five storage units are used.

The image storage unit 12 shown in FIG.
The latest input image component 7 output from is stored, and the storage unit 13 stores an image component one frame before that. Similarly, an image component one frame before the image component of the storage unit 13 is stored in the storage unit 14, and image components from five frames before the input image data 6 are stored in the storage units 16, 15, 14, respectively. 13 and 12 are stored in this order. The averaging unit 17 calculates an average value from the image components of the five frames stored in the storage units 12 to 16, and outputs the average value to the difference detection unit 3 as the reference image component 8.

Since the latest input image component 7 is periodically input to the reference image component generation unit 2, when the latest input image component 7 is input, the storage units 12 to 16 store data as follows. Data moves. First, the image components of the storage unit 15 are moved to the storage unit 16, and subsequently, the image components of the storage unit 14 are moved to the storage unit 15. Similarly, the image components in the storage unit 13 are moved to the storage unit 14, and so on, and the image components in the storage unit are moved to the storage units on the right side.

At this time, since the image component in the storage unit 15 is overwritten in the storage unit 16, the previous image component in the storage unit 16 (the image component corresponding to the oldest frame in the storage unit) is deleted. Is done. When the data stored in the storage units 12 to 16 move, the latest image component 7 is stored in the storage unit 12.

As described above, the storage units 12 to 16 of the reference image generation unit 2 have the same configuration as the shift register. When the latest input image component 7 is input to the storage unit 12, the reference image component 8 also has a different value. Therefore, the reference image component 8 is generated again and output to the difference detection unit 3.

Next, another example of the configuration of the reference image component generator 2 will be described with reference to FIG. As shown in the figure, this configuration example includes an averaging processing unit 17, a memory circuit 18, and a memory control unit 19. The memory circuit 18 shown in FIG.
A general memory circuit configuration called a RAM may be used, and its memory capacity only needs to be large enough to write image components for the optimum number of frames required to generate the reference image component 8.

In this configuration example, first, the latest input image component 7 that is periodically input by the memory circuit 18 is sequentially written to different addresses, and the memory controller 19 controls the address 2
The image component data 21 is read out by designating 0. The read image component data 21 is input to the averaging processing unit 17, and the reference image component 8 obtained there is output to the difference detection unit 3.

Next, the difference detecting section 3 will be described. The difference detection unit 3 is a processing unit that detects a difference value between the latest input image component 7 and the reference image component 8 that are input,
The detected correction data 9 is output to the input image correction unit 5.

The input image storage unit 4 described below stores the input image data 6 during the detection of the correction data 9 described above.
Is a storage unit for temporarily storing. The input image storage unit 4 may use a general memory called a video memory, an SRAM or a DRAM, or a dedicated memory having a FIFO structure called a frame memory. In this embodiment, an example using a frame memory will be described. Generally, image data is input in the order of the lower right pixel from the upper left pixel of the screen.Taking the case of a frame memory as an example, for input / output, the image data is stored or output in order from the upper left pixel to the lower right pixel. I do.

In the input image correction unit 5 which is the image data output unit of the first embodiment, the correction is performed by adding the correction data 9 and the correction target image data 10 output from the input image storage unit 4 for each pixel. Do. The image data corrected by the input image correction unit 5 is output to the outside as output image data 11.

The above is the description of the basic configuration example for realizing the first embodiment.

Next, an example of correction processing (an example of correction processing in the input image correction unit 5 described above) according to the present invention will be described with reference to FIG. In the figure, the horizontal axis represents the pixel value, and the vertical axis represents the number of pixels. The straight line 22 in FIG.
Assuming that the curve 23 is a histogram curve of the correction target image data 10 shown in FIG. 1, the straight line 24 is the latest input image component 7 shown in FIG. 1, and the interval 25 between the straight lines 22 and 24 is the correction data 9 Become. When the correction data 9 is added to the pixel value for each pixel, the histogram of the output image data 11 becomes a curve 26.

By performing the correction processing as described above, the histogram curve of the image data is shifted to the right in parallel. In other words, the image data before the correction processing has low pixel values, but by performing the correction processing of the present invention, the omnidirectional pixel values are increased. In the image where flicker actually occurs, the pixel value varies for each frame, so
By performing the above processing, it is possible to suppress the fluctuation of the pixel value.

As described above, according to the present invention, by using the image components of the reference image, it is possible to suppress the flicker of the image generated by the illumination such as the fluorescent lamp with the image processing apparatus having a simple configuration. In addition, the correction processing according to the present invention can enhance the correlation between the respective frames, and can provide an effect when transferring image data via the Internet, a video conference system, a video phone, or the like.

Next, a second embodiment will be described with reference to FIG. As shown in the figure, in the present embodiment, based on the basic configuration example of the first embodiment, image format conversion units 27 and 29 and an image data synthesizing unit 28 are newly provided in the image data input / output unit. Instead, they are provided in the luminance image storage unit 30 and the dye image storage unit 31. First, on the input side, the input image data 6 is converted by the image format converter 27 into a luminance / dye component format. Here, in order to specify the format of the image data of the input image data 6, the input image format information 32 is newly input to the image format conversion unit 27.

The image data converted into the luminance / dye format in the image format converter 27 is divided into luminance image data 33 and dye image data 34. The luminance image data 33 is output to the image component extraction unit 1 and the input image storage unit 4,
The dye image data 34 is output to the dye image storage 31.
As described above, in this embodiment, the luminance image data 33 is input instead of the input image data 6 in the first embodiment, and the extraction of the image components and the detection of the correction data 8 are internally performed using the luminance image data 33. It is carried out.

Similarly, the input image correction unit 5 performs a correction specialized for the luminance component, and outputs the corrected luminance image data 3.
Output as 5. The luminance-corrected image data 35 and the dye image data 36 output from the dye image storage unit 31 are synthesized by the image data synthesis unit 28, and the synthesized image data 37 is output to the image format conversion unit 29. Here, using the input image format information 32, the image is returned to the image format at the time of input, and is output to the outside as output image data 11.

The above is the data flow in this embodiment. Next, the effect of the processing limited to the luminance component of the image data, which is a feature of the present embodiment, will be described with reference to FIG. The figure shows the amount of calculation in the image component extraction unit 1 and the input image correction unit 5, and a) and c) in the figure are the first embodiment, b),
d) is the second embodiment. As shown in FIGS. 7A and 7B, it is necessary to obtain each pixel value in order to extract an image component. For example, in the case of general image data composed of red, green, and blue components, which is called the RGB format in the first embodiment, two operations (addition) are performed to obtain the pixel value of one pixel. Is required.

However, if the luminance component is limited as in the present embodiment, b) Since the pixel value of only one luminance component has already been extracted as shown in FIG. It is only necessary to determine the pixel value of. Specifically, only the addition process of (number of pixels-1) and the division process by the number of pixels are required. This is the first embodiment with the above RGB
In the case of the format, it is understood that an addition process of the processing amount plus the number of pixels × 2 is required.

Also, as can be seen from FIGS. 3C and 3D, in the image correction processing, one pixel is applied to each pixel of the second embodiment.
In the first embodiment, three calculations need to be performed for each component, that is, three times for one pixel.

As described above, by applying this embodiment, the amount of arithmetic processing in the first embodiment can be reduced to about 1/3. To apply this embodiment, image format conversion processing is required. However, if the image format at the time of input is a luminance / dye component format, a pure reduction in the amount of calculation can be expected. In addition, the present invention aims to remove flicker caused by illumination and the like, and since the luminance component in image data greatly affects the flicker, the present embodiment in which the component is limited to luminance has the most effect. It can be said that the correction processing is obtained. Further, even if two storage units, that is, a luminance image storage unit and a dye image storage unit, are provided, since the entire image data is simply divided into two and stored, the size of the storage unit is the first.
This is equivalent to the embodiment.

Next, a third embodiment will be described with reference to FIG. In this embodiment, the reference image component generation processing in the first and second embodiments is divided into several regions. As shown in the figure, in the basic configuration example, a region image component extraction unit 38, a reference region image component generation unit 39, a difference detection unit 40, and region image control units 41 and 42 are added or changed. FIG. 3 is an example of the basic configuration of the present embodiment for the first embodiment. As an overall flow, first, when the input image data 6 is input, the region image component extraction unit 38 divides the region and divides the region into the region image components 43 for each region.
And 45 are extracted. The reason why the area image component is divided into two and outputted is that the difference detection unit 40 performs processing for each corresponding area.

The extracted region image component 43 is output to the reference region image component extraction unit 39, and a reference region image component 44 is generated for each region. The generated reference region image component 44
And the area image component 45 extracted by the area image component extraction unit 38
Is output to the difference detection unit 40. At this time, the timing of data output is controlled by the region image control unit 40 in order to detect correction data of the corresponding regions. As described above, the region correction data 47 for each region is detected by the difference detection unit 40, and the region difference value 4 is adjusted in accordance with the output timing of the corrected image data 46 output from the input image storage unit 4.
7 is controlled by the area image control unit 42. The above is the outline of the present embodiment. Next, the internal configuration of each processing unit will be described.

First, the area image component extraction unit 38 will be described with reference to FIGS. FIG. 8 is an example of area division of a screen in this embodiment. As shown in the figure, this is an example in which the image is divided into 3 × 3 areas, and is divided into nine areas 48 to 56. Since the flow of the image data is input from the upper left to the lower right of the screen, it will be described with reference to FIG.
8, ..., 59, 60, ..., 61, 62, ...
In that order. FIG. 9 shows the 3 × 3 of FIG.
5 is an example of the internal configuration of a region image component extraction unit 38 in a region division example. The reason why there are three component extraction units 63 to 65 in the figure is that the image data is input for each line as described above, and the number of component extraction units here is the number of divided lines, that is, the vertical It depends on the number of divisions in the direction. Actually, the pixels 57, 58,...
Pixel data up to 59 (pixels in the first line of the area 48)
Is output to the component extraction unit 64. Similarly, control is performed so that pixel data (data of the first line of the region 49) from the pixel 60 is output to the component extraction unit 65, and data of the first line of the region 50 is output to the component extraction unit 66.

When the data up to the pixel 60 is output to the component extraction unit 66, the data of the pixel 61 is sent to the component extraction unit 64.
The data in the column of the region 49 is output to the component extraction unit 49, and the data in the column of the region 50 is output to the component extraction unit 50. The image components extracted by the respective component extraction units 64-66 are output to the reference area image component generation unit 39 and the difference detection unit 40. The output timing to the difference detection unit 40 is as described above. Therefore, an extraction component storage unit 66 is provided to store temporary data.

Next, FIG. 10 shows the internal configuration of the reference area image component generator 39. As shown in the figure, the processing unit generates reference components corresponding to each region, so that the component generation units 68 to 70 for the number of divisions in the vertical direction similarly to the region image component extraction unit 38.
Is provided. The data generated by the component generators 68 to 70 is temporarily stored in a generated component storage 71,
The output to 0 is controlled by the area image control unit 40.

The difference detection unit 40 similarly calculates the area difference value 47
Is provided, and the output timing to the input image correction unit is controlled by the area image control unit 42.

The input image correction section 4 starts outputting corrected image data 46 to the input image correction section 5 when the area difference value 47 is detected for the entire screen. At this time, the area image control unit 42
Controls the difference detection unit 40 to output the region difference value 47 corresponding to each region to the input image correction unit 5. The input image correction unit 5 receives the correction data corresponding to each area as described above and outputs the corrected data to the output image data 1.
Output to the outside as 1.

According to the present embodiment, which is characterized by the above-described area division processing, the following effects can be obtained. First, in the first and second embodiments, since the correction is performed with a uniform correction value over the entire screen, the correction process is performed even on an image area which is not affected by illumination or the like (no flicker is generated). And the accuracy of the correction process is low.

However, the use of this embodiment makes it difficult to perform correction on a screen area which is not affected by the illumination or the like (no flicker is generated). As a result, processing is performed on an image where flicker is conspicuous, but it is difficult to perform correction processing on an area where flicker is not conspicuous, so that it is possible to improve the correction processing accuracy and reduce the processing amount. The above-described effects can be obtained for the second embodiment as well as the first embodiment.

Next, a fourth embodiment will be described with reference to FIG. This embodiment is for correcting a difference in correction data at each boundary line generated when an image is divided into regions in the third embodiment. As shown in FIG. It shows a method of making the boundary line inconspicuous by using a value. Note that a1 shown in FIG.
1, a12, a21, and a22 indicate reference image components in each area.

First, the correction data of each area is compared with an adjacent area, and if it is equal to or more than a certain value, the above-mentioned intermediate value correction is performed. FIG. 11A) shows a case where the intermediate value correction is required for the adjacent boundary line 72. a) As shown in the figure, an area is specified in units of several lines with respect to the horizontal boundary line 72, and an intermediate value is generated in each of the areas 73, 74, and 75 to perform correction. The specific value of the intermediate value is (2 * a12 + a22) / 3 for the area 73 and (a1
2 + a22) / 2, and the area 75 has (a12 + 2 * a
22) / 3 using an intermediate value component. Vertical border 73
Similarly, the area is further divided in units of several dots. Intermediate value components are generated for the regions 77, 78 and 79 in the same manner as in the horizontal case.

By performing the correction by applying the above-mentioned intermediate value, extremely different area correction can be prevented.

In order to further make the boundary lines less noticeable, the extracted components of each region are applied only to the center of the region, as shown in FIG. The corrected data is used as the correction data. b) When attention is paid to the boundary line 80 as shown in the drawing, the correction data becomes a line 81. The figure shows an example of the correction of the intermediate value in the vertical direction of the boundary line 80. However, if this is also applied to the horizontal direction, more detailed and smooth correction can be performed.

Next, a fifth embodiment will be described with reference to FIG. This embodiment is a correction method in which the correction data of a specified area is applied to the entire one screen at the time of area division in the third embodiment. As shown in the figure, this embodiment has the same block configuration as the first embodiment. However, since the image component extraction unit 82 extracts an image component using only the designated area, a processing unit for designating the area is provided inside. The reference image component generation unit 83 and the difference detection unit 84 perform the same processing as in the first embodiment based on the image components 86 in the area specified by the image component extraction unit 82.

The input image storage section 85 temporarily stores the input image data until the correction data 9 is detected, and outputs the input image data to the input image correction section 5. At this time, the area to be specified is 1
In the case of the line, since the input image data 6 is input for each line from the upper left pixel of the screen, the image components can be extracted at a timing earlier than in the first embodiment.

Similarly, since the generation of the reference image component 87 and the detection of the correction data 9 can be processed at a quick timing, the correction processing can be performed before the input image data 6 is completely input on one screen. In the above-described embodiment, the input image storage unit 8
Although the capacity of 5 is necessary to store the image data of one screen, the capacity can be reduced to about 1 line when the above-mentioned area is designated.

About one line means the input time of one line of image data plus the time until the correction data 9 is detected. The correction target image data 10 output from the input image storage unit 85 is stored for the time. Then, it is only necessary to output to the input image correction unit 5. The input image correction unit 5 performs correction processing on the correction target image data 10 based on the input correction data 9 and outputs it as output image data to the outside.

As described above, according to this embodiment, two great effects can be obtained. The first is that the amount of calculation can be reduced by limiting the area, and the second is that the capacity of the input image storage unit 85 can be reduced. However,
As described above, the capacity of the second input image storage unit 85 can be reduced because it depends on the last input time among the pixels in the designated area. If an area including is specified, the capacity cannot be reduced. However, an object of the present invention is to remove flickering of lighting and the like, and generally, there is a high probability that lighting appears on the screen at the upper part of the screen, so that the reduction of the storage capacity of the present embodiment can be easily applied.

In the above example, the first line is used. However, if the area is further reduced, the scale of the input image storage unit 85 can be further reduced. However, if the area is made too small, the reliability as correction data will be weakened, so it is necessary to secure a certain area.

Next, a sixth embodiment will be described with reference to FIG. Note that the drawing shows an application of this embodiment to the first embodiment. In the present embodiment, input image data 6 to be input
Is characterized in that, when an image is changed from a scene between frames to a certain scene, image components of past several frames constituting a reference image component are not used.

As shown in the figure, in the basic configuration, a scene change detecting section 88 and a reference image component generating section 89 are provided between the difference detecting section 3 and the input image correcting section in the first embodiment.
First, the scene change detection unit 88 determines whether or not a scene change has occurred using the correction data 9 output from the difference detection unit 3. Therefore, a certain threshold is set here. The certain threshold value here is an optimum value that can be regarded as a scene change.

If the threshold value is exceeded,
Assuming that a scene change has occurred in the input image data 6, a scene change detection signal 90 is output to the reference image component generation unit 89. In the reference image component generation unit 89, a scene change detection signal 90
Is input, the past image components stored so far are deleted, the reference image component is reconfigured, and the difference detection unit 3
Output to When the scene change detection unit 89 does not regard the scene change, the correction data 9 output from the difference detection unit 3 is sent to the input image correction unit 5 as it is.
Is output. The above is the change of the operation in the present embodiment.

Next, FIGS. 15 and 16 show the internal structure of the reference image component generator 89 in this embodiment. As shown in FIG. 15, image components are stored in the storage units 92 to 96. When the scene change detection signal 9 is input, the storage units 92 to 96 store the image components.
Values other than are deleted. If the image components in the storage units 93 to 96 are exhausted, a reference image component cannot be formed at this time. Therefore, the averaging processing unit 97 converts the image components in the storage unit 92 storing only the latest input image component 7 The reference image component 8 is output. After that, when a certain period of time has elapsed, the image components are generated up to the storage unit 93.
An average value is configured from the image components in the storage units 92 and 93.

As the time elapses, the number of generated image components increases to three and four, so that the number is increased each time to form an average value. Similarly, in the internal configuration example of FIG.
When the scene change detection signal 90 is input, the averaging processing section 98
Then, the image components to be used are controlled in the same manner as described above to form the reference image components.

The above is the basic operation example of the present embodiment. In the above-described embodiments 1 to 5, the reference image component is constantly generated using image components several frames past from the latest input image. However, when a scene is changed in the input image data, The image before the scene is changed affects the image data immediately after the scene is changed. Therefore, when scene change detection is performed as in the present embodiment,
It is possible to realize a correction processing device which is not affected by the scene change. Also, when outputting to another image processing apparatus having a scene change detection function, there is an effect that the scene change can be easily detected.

Next, a seventh embodiment will be described with reference to FIG. In the present embodiment, motion detection is performed by setting the threshold value of the correction data, which is regarded as a scene change in the sixth embodiment, to a smaller value. This threshold value sets an optimum value at which motion can be detected in an image. As shown, a motion detecting section is provided instead of the scene change detecting section 88 of the sixth embodiment. In addition, the internal configuration of the reference image component generation unit 100 is different from that of the sixth embodiment.

The flow of data in this embodiment is the same as that in the sixth embodiment described above. However, if the value of the correction data 9 input to the motion detecting section is equal to or larger than the threshold, the reference image component generating section A motion detection signal 101 is output to 100. The reference image component generation unit 100 generates a reference image component only based on the motion detection signal 101. At that time, all image components that have been stored internally as reference components up to that point are deleted, and reference image components are constructed using the latest input image component 7 and image components input thereafter.

However, if the correction data 9 is equal to or smaller than the threshold value set by the motion detecting section 99, the motion detecting signal 101 is not output to the reference image component generating section 100. At this time, the latest input image component 7 is constantly input to the reference image component generation unit, but this value is not stored, and no new reference image component is generated. Other operations are performed in the same manner as in the above-described embodiment.

The following effects can be obtained by using the present embodiment as described above. First, in the above-described embodiments, the reference image component is constantly generated, but the value of the generated reference image component is substantially the same between frames in the input image where there is no change (movement). But,
Since the generation of the reference image component is performed only when there is a change in the input image as in the present embodiment, it is possible to reduce the amount of arithmetic processing without significantly deteriorating the correction accuracy.

[0065]

As described above, according to the present invention, it is possible to suppress the flicker of an image generated by illumination such as a fluorescent lamp. In addition, it is possible to increase the inter-frame correlation, thereby improving the image compression ratio and enabling efficient image transfer.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a basic configuration according to a first embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating an example of an internal configuration of a reference image component generation unit according to the first embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a diagram illustrating another example of the internal configuration of the reference image component generation unit according to the first embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a diagram illustrating an example of a correction process in an input image correction unit according to the first embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 5 is a block diagram showing a basic configuration according to a second embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 6 is a comparison diagram of the amount of arithmetic processing according to the first and second embodiments of the present invention.

FIG. 7 is a block diagram showing a basic configuration according to a third embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 8 is a diagram showing an example of area division according to a third embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 9 is a block diagram illustrating an example of an internal configuration of an area image component extraction unit according to a third embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 10 is a block diagram illustrating an example of an internal configuration of a reference region image component generation unit according to a third embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 11 is a block diagram illustrating an example of generating an intermediate value of a boundary line according to a fourth embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 12 is a block diagram showing a basic configuration according to a fifth embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 13 is a block diagram showing a basic configuration according to a sixth embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 14 is a diagram illustrating an internal configuration of a reference image component generation unit according to a sixth embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 15 is a diagram illustrating another internal configuration of the reference image component generation unit according to the sixth embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 16 is a block diagram showing a basic configuration according to a seventh embodiment of the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 ... Image component extraction part, 2 ... Reference image component generation part, 3 ... Difference detection part, 4 ... Input image storage part, 5 ... Input image correction part,
6 ... input image data, 7 ... latest input image component, 8 ... reference image component, 9 ... correction data, 10 ... correction target image data, 11 ... output image data, 12-16 ... storage unit, 17
... Averaging unit, 18 ... Memory circuit, 19 ... Memory control unit, 20 ... Address, 21 ... Image component data, 22 ... Reference image component (straight line), 23 ... Correction target image data (Curve), 24 ... Correction target Image components (straight lines), 25: correction data, 26: output image data (curves), 27: image format conversion unit, 28: image data synthesis unit, 29: image format conversion unit, 30: luminance image storage unit, 31 ... Dye image storage unit, 3
2 ... input image format information, 33 ... luminance image data, 34 ...
Dye image data, 35: brightness corrected image data, 36: dye image data, 37: composite image data, 38: area image component extraction unit, 39: reference area image component generation unit, 40: difference detection unit, 41: area image Control unit, 42: region image control unit, 43: region image component, 44: reference region image component, 4
5 area image component, 46 corrected image data, 47 area difference value, 48 to 56 area, 57 to 62 pixel, 63
Area control unit, 64-66 component extraction unit, 67 extracted component storage unit, 68-70 component generation unit, 71 generation component storage unit, 72 boundary line, 73 boundary line, 74-79 region,
80: boundary line, 81: correction data, 82: image component extraction unit, 83: reference image component generation unit, 84: difference detection unit, 8
5 Input image storage unit 86 Image component 87 Reference image component 88 Scene change detection unit 89 Reference image component generation unit 90 Scene change detection signal 91 Correction data 92
-96: storage unit, 97: averaging processing unit, 98: averaging processing unit, 99: motion detection unit, 100: reference image component generation unit, 101: motion detection signal.

 ──────────────────────────────────────────────────続 き Continuing on the front page (72) Inventor Morino Tokai 1099 Ozenji Temple, Aso-ku, Kawasaki City, Kanagawa Prefecture Inside the Hitachi, Ltd.System Development Laboratory (72) Inventor Toru Kajiyama 292 Yoshida-cho, Totsuka-ku, Yokohama-shi, Kanagawa Prefecture Inside Hitachi Image Information System (72) Inventor Tomohisa Kohiyama 1099 Ozenji Temple, Aso-ku, Kawasaki City, Kanagawa Prefecture Inside System Development Laboratory, Hitachi, Ltd. (72) Inventor Satoshi Kakizaki 5--22 Kamimizuhoncho, Kodaira-shi, Tokyo No. 1 Inside Hitachi Super LSI Systems Co., Ltd. (72) Inventor Yutaka Okayama 1099 Ozenji Temple, Aso-ku, Kawasaki-shi, Kanagawa Prefecture Inside System Development Laboratory, Hitachi, Ltd. (72) Nobuaki Kohinata Kanagawa 1099 Ozenji Temple, Aso-ku, Kawasaki-shi Research house (72) inventor Ryuichi Agawa Kanagawa Prefecture, Totsuka-ku, Yokohama-shi Yoshida-cho, 292 address Co., Ltd. Hitachi image information system in the F-term (reference) 5C021 PA52 PA58 PA66 PA76 PA77 PA83 RA16 RB06 RB08 SA11 SA24 YA07

Claims (7)

[Claims] A means for extracting an image component in the input image; a means for generating a reference image component from extracted image components for the past several frames input before the latest input image; Means for detecting a difference value, that is, correction data from an image component; means for storing input image data while detecting the correction data; and applying correction to the correction target image stored in the storage unit using the correction data. And an output unit for outputting the image data. 2. An image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein said means for converting the format of the input image data into luminance / dye components, means for correcting only the luminance component, What is claimed is: 1. An image processing apparatus comprising: means for synthesizing dye image data that is not subjected to processing; and performing processing limited to only the luminance component of the image data, thereby reducing the amount of calculation. 3. An image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein said means for extracting an image component by dividing the area, means for forming a reference image component for each area, and detecting correction data for each area. Means, and means for controlling image data processing timing at the time of area division or synthesis,
An image processing apparatus characterized in that one screen is divided into several regions, thereby improving correction processing accuracy and reducing the amount of calculation. 4. An image processing apparatus according to claim 3, wherein when the correction data of the adjacent area is extremely different due to the area division, the correction processing for blurring the boundary line using the intermediate value is performed. apparatus. 5. The image processing apparatus according to claim 3, wherein the correction processing is performed on the entire screen using the difference value of the designated area, and the correction data detection time is reduced by limiting the area. An image processing apparatus capable of reducing the scale of a storage unit that holds input image data during the processing period. 6. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the correction data obtained by comparing the latest image component with the reference image component is regarded as a scene change if the value is equal to or greater than a certain threshold value. An image processing apparatus characterized by being free from the influence of image data before a scene change by deleting data of past several frames constituting a reference image component. 7. An image processing apparatus according to claim 6, wherein a detailed threshold value is provided for the correction data so that it can be determined whether or not the input image has a change or a movement, and the correction data exceeds the threshold value. An image processing apparatus that controls generation of a reference image component only when the reference image component is generated and reduces the amount of reference image component generation processing.