JP3123840B2 - Image update device - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an image updating apparatus capable of forming a high-definition wide-angle visual field image while keeping the amount of input information per unit time low.

[0002] The present invention relates to two-way image communication such as a videophone or a video conference, one-way image communication such as an image transmission service and a television broadcast, an image storage and display service such as an image information search service, and an intruder or a suspicious person. It can be used in a wide range of industrial fields such as monitoring systems that transmit, store and display images.

[0003]

2. Description of the Related Art In a conventional wide-angle image acquisition apparatus, in order to reduce input information per unit time, the resolution of an input wide-angle image is reduced, pixels or scanning lines are updated discretely, and image change is performed. Update only part,
And other measures were taken.

For this reason, in the case of (1), a sufficient resolution cannot be obtained. In the case of (2), an image bleeds due to mismatch between pixels or scanning lines, which hinders viewing of the image. In the pre-processing for generating information, it is necessary to detect and selectively update only a portion having a large temporal change from a high-definition image over the entire angle of view corresponding to a wide-angle imaging system. There was a problem that it was enormous.

[0005]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention has been made to solve the above-mentioned problems of the prior art, and has a relatively high definition while keeping the amount of input information per unit time low. Bleeding due to the difference in the imaging time of
It is an object of the present invention to provide a device which realizes acquisition of a wide-angle image which enables a large reduction in the amount of preprocessing.

[0006]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing the principle of the present invention. The wide-angle imaging system 10 is a means for inputting a wide-angle image of an entire image having a relatively coarse resolution. The narrow-angle imaging system 11 is a means for inputting a partial image having a finer resolution than the wide-angle imaging system 10. The image processing device 12 includes a wide-angle imaging system 10 using a microprocessor or the like.
This is a device that performs a process of synthesizing an image input from the camera and an image input from the narrow-angle imaging system 11.

The wide-angle image time change detecting means 13 monitors the image from the wide-angle image pickup system 10, detects a portion where the temporal image change frequently occurs, and picks up the image position so as to pick up the portion. This is a means for issuing an instruction to the control means 14. The imaging position control unit 14 is a unit that controls the imaging position of the narrow-angle imaging system 11 so as to scan within the angle of view of the wide-angle imaging system 10.

The image update control unit 15 updates the image stored in the image storage unit 18. In particular, the image processing unit 16 stores a wide-angle image. This is means for storing an image in the image storage unit 18. Update processing means 1 of narrow-angle visual field range using narrow-angle image
Reference numeral 7 denotes a unit that replaces the image stored in the image storage unit 18 with the narrow-angle image input from the narrow-angle imaging system 11. Thus, the images in the image storage unit 18 are sequentially refined.

The wide-angle image storage processing means 16 replaces the image in the image storage unit 18 replaced by the input from the narrow-angle imaging system 11 with the input from the wide-angle imaging system 10 over time. It is configured as follows.

[0010]

According to the present invention, first, low-resolution whole images from the wide-angle imaging system 10 are sequentially taken into the image storage unit 18, and a temporal change is detected from the whole image, and the narrow-angle imaging system 11 is temporally changed. Means for sequentially replacing the corresponding part of the image in the image storage unit 18 with the input high-resolution partial image toward a part where the frequency of the image change is high is used.

As a result, with the movement of the imaging position of the narrow-angle imaging system 11, the image from the wide-angle imaging system 10 in the image storage unit 18, which was a low-resolution whole image in the initial state, is changed.
It is sequentially replaced with a high-resolution partial image input from the narrow-angle imaging system 11, and a high-definition wide-angle image can be obtained.

In addition, since a region having an area having a certain size corresponding to the angle of view of the narrow-angle imaging system is simultaneously updated, it is possible to reduce blurring of an image. In particular, according to the first aspect of the present invention, there is no need for preprocessing for detecting a portion having a large temporal change from a high-definition image corresponding to the entire angle of view corresponding to the wide-angle imaging system 10. According to the invention described in Item 2, since the preprocessing for detecting a portion having a large temporal change only needs to be performed from the low-resolution whole image, a high-definition wide-angle image with a small amount of processing in the preprocessing is obtained. Can be realized.

In addition to the above, a narrow-angle imaging system 1 in which an image in the image storage unit 18 is updated as in the third aspect of the present invention.
If the high-resolution partial image from 1 is invalidated over time and replaced with a low-resolution whole image from the wide-angle imaging system 10, the high-resolution image input from the narrow-angle imaging system 11 will remain for a long time. It is possible to avoid the occurrence of a temporal mismatch due to the above.

[0014]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. FIG. 2 shows a configuration example of the image updating apparatus according to the embodiment of the present invention. In FIG. 2, the same reference numerals as those in FIG. 1 correspond to those shown in FIG.
21 denotes an imaging position control unit, 22 denotes an image update prohibition flag storage unit, 23 denotes an update time information storage unit, and 24 denotes an image display unit.

The wide-angle imaging system 10 captures a low-resolution wide-angle image and outputs the image to the time change detection unit 20 and the image update control unit 15. The time change detection unit 20 continuously monitors an image from the wide-angle imaging system 10, extracts an area having the largest time change, and uses the coordinates of the area as the imaging position control unit 2.
Output to 1.

The imaging position control unit 21 includes a time change detection unit 2
Based on the coordinate information starting from 0, the imaging position of the narrow-angle imaging system 11 is moved to the region where the temporal change is greatest, and the coordinates of the imaging position of the narrow-angle imaging system 11 are updated by the image update control unit 15. Then, the image data is output to the image update prohibition flag storage unit 22 and the update time information storage unit 23.

The narrow-angle imaging system 11 captures a high-resolution narrow-angle image and outputs the image to the image update control unit 15. The image update control unit 15 converts the images from the wide-angle imaging system 10 and the narrow-angle imaging system 11 into the corresponding image only at the pixel positions where the image update inhibition flag stored in the image update inhibition flag storage unit 22 is OFF. It is stored at the pixel position of the storage unit 18.

The image update prohibition flag storage unit 22 includes a flag group provided for each pixel position of the image storage unit 18 and indicating an image update permission (OFF) and an image update prohibition (ON). And rewriting the flag at a position corresponding to the visual field range of the narrow-angle imaging system 11, and rewriting the flag based on the elapsed time from the time information in the update time information storage unit 23.

The update time information storage unit 23 stores the image storage unit 1
8 includes a time information memory group provided corresponding to each pixel position, and stores the time when the image update inhibition flag is rewritten to ON. When the image update control unit 15, the image update prohibition flag storage unit 22, and the update time information storage unit 23 determine the field of view of the narrow-angle imaging system 11, the information of the imaging position input from the imaging position control unit 21 is used. Used. The image storage unit 18 includes an image memory having a field of view of the wide-angle imaging system 10 and a resolution of the narrow-angle imaging system 11, and stores the image updated by the image update control unit 15 in the image display unit 24.
Output to The image display unit 24 displays the image input from the image storage unit 18.

FIG. 3 shows an example of a flow chart illustrating an image updating process in the image updating apparatus. (A) ~ in the following description
(j) corresponds to the processing (a) to (j) shown in FIG. (a) First, all the image update prohibition flags in the image update prohibition flag storage unit 22 are initialized to OFF, and all time information in the update time information storage unit 23 is initialized to zero.

(B) Next, a low-resolution wide-angle image is input by the wide-angle imaging system 10 and a high-resolution narrow-angle image is input by the narrow-angle imaging system 11. (c) Next, the image update prohibition flag corresponding to the visual field range of the narrow-angle imaging system 11 is turned off.

(D) Next, by referring to the time information in the update time information storage unit 23, the image update prohibition flag that has passed a predetermined time (T seconds or more) since it was turned on is turned off. (e) Next, referring to the image update prohibition flag storage unit 22,
Only in the pixel position where the image update prohibition flag is OFF, the pixel value of the corresponding position in the wide-angle image is stored in the image storage unit 18.

(F) Next, in the image storage section 18, the pixel position corresponding to the view range of the narrow-angle imaging system 11 is updated with the narrow-angle image. (g) Next, the image update prohibition flag of the area corresponding to the visual field range of the narrow-angle imaging system 11 is turned on.

(H) Next, the time is stored in the update time information memory at the corresponding position only for the pixel position where the image update prohibition flag has changed to ON. (i) Monitor the wide-angle image and detect the area with the largest temporal change.

(J) The imaging position of the narrow-angle imaging system 11 is directed to the position where the temporal change of the wide-angle image is greatest. Thereafter, returning to the process (b), the processes from the input of the wide-angle image and the narrow-angle image to the position control of the narrow-angle imaging system are similarly repeated.

FIG. 4 is an explanatory diagram of an example of execution by the image updating apparatus. In FIG. 4, a rectangle 30 indicated by a thick solid line on the outside represents a visual field range of a wide-angle image, and rectangles 31-1 to 31-2 indicated by a broken line and a rectangle 31-indicated by a thin solid line on the inside. Numerals 3 to 31-5 represent a visual field range of the narrow-angle image, and an arrow 32 represents a time change of the imaging position of the narrow-angle imaging system 11.

The execution example shown in FIG. 4 is an example in which the imaging position of the narrow-angle imaging system 11 is initially at the upper left corner of the wide-angle image field of view, and moves toward the lower right corner over time. is there. At this time, with the movement of the line of sight, the repetition processing of the flowchart shown in FIG. 3 is performed five times, and the update with the narrow-angle image is performed five times. Further, here, the narrow-angle image updated in the first two processes disappears with the passage of time (the range of the dashed rectangles 31-1 to 31-2), and the narrow-angle image updated later is displayed. Range (thin solid line rectangle 31-3)
Only the case where the narrow-angle image remains is shown only in the range of ３１31-5).

The image updating apparatus according to the present invention is disclosed in, for example, an application filed by the present applicant (Aizawa: Japanese Patent Application No. 4-25923).
No. 9: video communication system) can be used as means for synthesizing videos of different resolutions.

[0029]

As described above, according to the present invention,
The following effects are obtained. (1) From the image with only coarse resolution in the initial state,
It is possible to gradually form a high-definition wide-angle visual field image while keeping the amount of input information per unit time low.

(2) By detecting a portion where the frequency of temporal image change is high and scanning by a narrow-angle imaging system, it is difficult to view the image. Matching can be reduced.

(3) The image in the image storage unit replaced by the input from the narrow-angle imaging system is replaced with the input from the wide-angle imaging system again with the lapse of time, so that the disturbance when viewing the image is prevented. In other words, it is possible to reduce image mismatching due to time change.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a principle block diagram of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating a configuration example of an image updating device according to the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart illustrating an image updating process according to the embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is an explanatory diagram of an execution example according to the embodiment of the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

 DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 10 Wide-angle imaging system 11 Narrow-angle imaging system 12 Image processing device 13 Time-change detection means of wide-angle image 14 Imaging position control means 15 Image update control unit 16 Wide-angle image storage processing means 17 Narrow-angle visual field range by narrow-angle image Update processing means 18 Image storage unit

Continuation of the front page (56) References JP-A-6-113294 (JP, A) JP-A-1-101087 (JP, A) JP-A-3-52479 (JP, A) JP-A-4-290088 (JP) JP-A-5-68245 (JP, A) JP-A-4-323990 (JP, A) JP-A-3-1229989 (JP, A) JP-A 1-254082 (JP, A) JP 53-35313 (JP, A) JP-A-2-291787 (JP, A) JP-A-4-248793 (JP, A) (58) Fields investigated (Int. Cl. ⁷ , DB name) H04N 7/10 -7/22

Claims (3)

(57) [Claims] An image of a whole image having a coarse resolution input by a wide-angle imaging system and an imaging system having a narrower angle than the whole image.
An image updating device in an image processing system having an image storage unit (18) in which an image of a partial image having a fine resolution input by (11) is synthesized and stored, wherein the wide-angle imaging system (10 The wide-angle image input processing is stored in the image storage unit (18).
An imaging position control means (14) for controlling an imaging position of the narrow-angle imaging system (11) so as to scan within an angle of view of the wide-angle imaging system (10); ) Is replaced with the narrow-angle image input from the narrow-angle imaging system (11).
7), wherein an image in the image storage section (18) is sequentially refined. 2. The image updating apparatus according to claim 1, wherein an image from the wide-angle imaging system is monitored, a portion where the frequency of image change with time is high is detected, and the portion is imaged. An image updating device comprising a wide-angle image time change detecting means (13) for instructing the imaging position control means (14) to perform the operation. 3. The image updating device according to claim 1, wherein said wide-angle image storage processing means (16) is replaced by an input from said narrow-angle imaging system (11) as time passes. An image updating apparatus characterized in that the image stored in the image storage section (18) is replaced with an input from the wide-angle imaging system (10) again.