JP3502165B2 - Digital image file system - Google Patents

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a digital image file system, and more particularly to a digital image generating or capturing, storing and reproducing system.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In the case of a recorded photograph taken as a technical material, for example, an image such as a waveform on the screen of an oscilloscope, the region to be actually viewed is not the entire region of the screen but a partial region of interest in many cases. The same is often true for recorded images from measuring instruments such as spectrum analyzers. The same applies to an image data file in which an image is recorded and analyzed in the form of digital data. That is, even when only the region of interest needs to be reproduced, the entire one screen is reproduced from the image data file. Even in the case of montage photographs and ID photographs, what is actually needed is often a partial area of the image, such as a facial portion. Even in such cases, 1
After playing the entire screen, the region of interest was enlarged and taken out.

[0003]

The image data itself has a high degree of redundancy, and therefore an image data file in which an image is digitally recorded has a large amount of data, resulting in a large file size. Therefore, even if only the region of interest, which is a part of the recorded image, needs to be searched, in the method in which the entire screen needs to be reproduced, it takes a long time to perform the reproduction and the search, and particularly the storage device having a slow search speed or a low transfer speed Then, the search time was extremely long. In addition, in order to retrieve the region of interest even in montage photographs and ID photos, the method of clipping the region of interest, for example, the face part of a person, is clipped after replaying the entire screen. There was a drawback that it required.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION It is an object of the present invention to solve the above-mentioned drawbacks of the prior art and to provide a digital image file system in which the amount of recorded data of a digital image is small and a region of interest in the recorded image can be searched at high speed. And

[0005]

In order to solve the above-mentioned problems, a digital image file system according to the present invention is provided.
An image signal input means for receiving an image signal representing an image of one screen and an area of one screen for the image signal are divided into a plurality of blocks having the same size, and an identification display uniquely assigned to each of the plurality of blocks is generated. The storage device includes block identification display generation means and storage means having a first area for storing image signals of a plurality of blocks in block units, and the storage means stores an identification display of a desired one of the plurality of blocks. A second area is provided.

The system according to the present invention further includes a reproducing means for reading the image signal stored in the storage means and visualizing an image represented by the image signal, and a plurality of blocks included in the image visualized by the reproducing means. The control means includes a designation means for designating a desired one and a control means for controlling the storage means and the reproduction means in response to the designation means. The control means refers to the second area of the storage means, and controls the second area. Of the stored identification displays, the identification display corresponding to the designation of the block by the designating means is retrieved, and the image signal of the block corresponding to the retrieved identification display is read out from the first area,
The image represented by the image signal of the block thus read may be visualized by the reproducing means.

According to the present invention, a step of preparing an image signal representing an image of one screen, and a step of dividing an area of one screen into a plurality of blocks having the same size for the image signal,
A step of assigning a unique identification display to each of the plurality of blocks, a step of storing image signals of the plurality of blocks in block units in the first area of the storage means, and an identification display of a desired one of the plurality of blocks are performed. Storing the digital image in a second area of the storage means.

According to the invention, the method further comprises the steps of reading the image signal stored in the storage means and visualizing the image represented by the image signal on the reproduction means, and the image visualized on the reproduction means. A step of designating a desired one of the plurality of blocks and an identification display corresponding to the designation of the block by the designating means among the identification displays stored in the second area with reference to the second area of the storage means. And a step of reading out the image signal of the block corresponding to the found identification display from the first area and visualizing the image represented by the image signal of the block thus read out by the reproducing means. It may be one.

[0009]

According to the present invention, the area of one screen is divided into a plurality of blocks of the same size for the image signal representing the image of one screen. A unique identification is assigned to each of these blocks. The image signals of the plurality of blocks are stored in block units in the first area of the storage means. Further, an identification display of a desired one of the plurality of blocks is stored in the second area of the storage means.

Therefore, the image signal stored in the storage means is read and the image represented by the image signal is visualized by the reproducing means. The user designates a desired one of the plurality of blocks included in the image visualized by the reproducing means by the designating means. Therefore, the second area of the storage means is referred to, and the identification display corresponding to the designation of the block by the designating means is searched from the identification display stored in the second area. The image signal of the block corresponding to the retrieved identification display is read from the first area, and the image represented by the image signal of the block thus read is visualized by the reproducing means.

[0011]

Embodiments of the digital image file system according to the present invention will now be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings. FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an embodiment of a digital image file system 10 according to the present invention. In this embodiment, the present invention is applied to an electronic still camera 11. The electronic still camera 11 picks up a subject (not shown) and generates an image signal representing a digital still image thereof. Is. As shown in FIG. 2, the light-receiving surface 12 of the electronic still camera 11
Consists of a matrix of photosensors for one field of a two-dimensional charge-coupled device (CCD), on which a subject image is formed from incident light from the subject. The electronic still camera 11 uses a horizontal transfer clock supplied from a CCD drive circuit (not shown).
In response to f _h and the vertical transfer clock f _v , the pixel signals in one horizontal row are repeatedly transferred to raster scan the entire screen area,
A digital image signal 100 consisting of a luminance signal Y and color signals R and B is output. In this system, the area of one screen of the image data output from the light receiving surface 12 is divided into n minimum unit areas composed of vertical and horizontal 64 × 64 pixels, that is, image blocks IB1 to IBn. Image processing, such as data compression, is performed in units. The size of the block is not limited to the value in this example.
It may be larger than the pixel. However, in general, a block having a size smaller than this is too small as a unit for setting an important block (MSIB) described later, and it is difficult to visually recognize it as an image, which is not suitable for practical use. Of course, it is not necessary for the blocks to have the same number of vertical and horizontal pixels. FIG. 2 shows the light-receiving surface 12 where n is 16 blocks for purposes of illustration only.

The electronic still camera 11 is a block number generator.
13, which produces the signal nf _h from the clock f _h ,
Image block number IBi by counting signals nf _h and f _v
Is a data generation circuit that generates and outputs this to output 100. FIG. 3 shows a state in which the image signal 100 is output in the order of the number of horizontally scanned image blocks, and data representing the image block number IBi is output in parallel at the beginning of each image block. However, i is an integer from 1 to n.

The image signal 100 and the image block number IBi output from the electronic still camera 11 are input to the encoder 14. The encoder 14 is a circuit for compressing and converting the image signal 100 by the JPEG method. More specifically, the image signal 100
Is quantized by discrete cosine transform (DCT), and further Huffman coded, which is converted into compressed data 101 for each image block shown in FIG.
The image block number IBi is added to this and output to the data bus 15 in the order of horizontal scanning. In this DCT transform, the input signal 100 is initialized from the beginning of the block each time the image block number 102 occurs. As a result, the compressed data 101 becomes independent data for each image block, and the DC component prediction value can be initialized in the DCT inverse transform at the time of decoding.
As will be described later, image blocks can be combined with arbitrary blocks. In this embodiment, the image compression is performed in the image block unit as described above, and generally 1
Since there is little change in the pattern inside one image block, there is an advantage that the compression rate is high.

Returning to FIG. 1, the present apparatus uses a file memory (F
M) 17 and the file memory 17 contains the image file 200
It is a mass storage memory such as an optical disk for accommodating the.
FIG. 5 shows a configuration example of the storage area. Image file 200
Is provided for each image (screen), and as shown in the figure,
It has a data part described below. That is, the image file header 201 is an area that stores the file number and the image name. The next area 202 is the number of image blocks IBi that form one screen as shown in FIG.
203 is an area for storing the creation date and time of the image file 200. Further, the n areas 301 to 30n are storage areas provided corresponding to the image blocks IB1 to IBn and storing the compressed image data 101 thereof. The IB pointer table 400 is an area for storing pointers that point to the start addresses of the compressed data areas 301 to 30n. The MSIB table 401 is an area for storing a display indicating a “important block” (MSIB) described later, for example, an important block number IBi and a macroblock number (described later). Multiple important block numbers can be stored. Also, there may be a plurality of combinations of important blocks, such as a combination of the first candidate and a combination of the second candidate. In the latter case, one macroblock number corresponds to each of these plural sets.

Returning to FIG. 1, the system has a microprocessor (MPU) 18. The processor 18 has a data bus 15
Via program memory (PM) 19, file memory 1
7, the encoder 14, the decoder 21 and the terminal 22 are connected to read the compressed data 101 output from the encoder 14 according to the control program such as the file creation program and the image reproduction program, and correspond to the image block number 102 This is a control unit that records this in the data areas 301 to 30n of the file 200 to be recorded. The processor 18 also uses the recorded data 10 in the data areas 301 to 30n in the file playback mode.
It also has a control function of reading out 1 in the order of horizontal scanning of the image field and inputting it to the encoder 19. The above-mentioned file creation program and image reproduction program are stored in the program memory 19.

The decoder 21 entropy-decodes the input data, dequantizes it, and transforms it into an inverse discrete cosine transform (IDCT),
This is a circuit for outputting a reproduced image signal 103 for raster scanning of a video screen. Since the input data of the decoder 21 is the compressed data 101 independent for each image block IBi as described above, the initialization in the decoding can be performed without any trouble. The reproduced image signal 103 is input to the video signal generation circuit 23.
The video signal generating circuit 23 receives the reproduced image signal 103 and the lattice pattern signal 104 generated by the block pattern generator 24, converts the reproduced image signal 103 and the lattice pattern signal 104 into a video signal, and the terminal 22 This is a circuit that outputs a visible image to the monitor TV 26 of. The block pattern generator 24 is turned on / off by the terminal 22. As illustrated in FIG. 6, on the monitor TV 26, the screen pattern 27 is displayed with the lattice pattern 28 represented by the block pattern signal 104 being superimposed on the image represented by the reproduced image signal 103.

The grid pattern 28 is a figure showing boundaries between adjacent ones of the image blocks IB1 to IBn in FIG. Therefore, in this embodiment, one unit of grid has a length and width of 64 ×
It is composed of 64 pixels. The user can freely set the region of interest of the image blocks IB1 to IBn on the screen 27 as the important image block (MSBI) 29 in a grid unit. This setting is performed using the operation unit such as the keyboard or mouse of the terminal 22. When the image block to be designated as the important block 29, for example, the numbers of IB10, IB11, IB14 and IB15 in this example, and the macro block identification display to be given to the entire area of these important blocks 29, for example, the numbers are inputted from the terminal 22, , The processor 18 uses the MSIB table 401 of the file 200 of FIG. 4 to identify the macroblock number and its image block IB10, IB1.
Register 1, IB14 and IB15 numbers. Along with this, in the present embodiment, the set region of interest is displayed on the screen 27 with diagonal lines as shown in FIG. Important block IB10,
The designation of IB11, IB14, and IB15 does not necessarily have to be performed by numbers. For example, in a system having a mouse in the terminal 22, it can be designated by displaying a cursor on the screen 27 and operating the mouse. Also, when only one macroblock is specified, or in such systems, macroblock identification is not necessary.

In the image block reproduction mode, which will be described later, if a macro block number is input from the terminal 22, the processor 18 reads the compressed data of the macro block corresponding to the macro block number from the file 200 and includes it in this macro block. Only the image of the important block 29 is displayed on the monitor TV 26. This device is also a printer (PR)
20 is a color printer which is connected to the terminal 22 and prints the image represented by the image data decoded by the decoder 21.

The system 10 operates in the operation modes of file registration, important block registration and image block reproduction.

When the file registration mode is input from the terminal 22, the processor 18 activates the electronic still camera 11. The electronic still camera 11 drives the light receiving surface 12 of the image pickup device by raster scanning, and encodes the image data 100 for each of the image blocks IB1 to IB16 and its block number IKi with an encoder 14
Output to. The encoder 14 compresses and converts the input image signal 100 from the electronic still camera 11 for each image block by the JPEG method, and outputs the compressed data 101 for each image block and its image block number 102 to the data bus 15. The processor 18 records the compressed data 101 of the encoder 14 in the data areas 301 to 30n (FIG. 5) of the file 200 corresponding to the image block number 102 by the file creation program of the program memory 19, and the image file header 201 The file number and image name in the area 202
The number of image blocks IB of the image is registered in 203, the image file creation date and time is registered in 203, and the start addresses of the data areas 301 to 30n are recorded in the IB pointer table 400.

When the important block registration mode is set from the terminal 22 and the file number is input, the processor 18 causes the data areas 301 to 30 of the image file 200 in the file memory 17 to be processed.
The compressed data 101 is read from n in the order of horizontal scanning of the image field and input to the decoder 21. The decoder 21 decompresses the read compressed data 101 and outputs the reproduced image signal 102 to the monitor TV 26. The monitor TV 26 displays the image represented by the reproduced image signal 102 and the lattice pattern 28 on the screen 27 as shown in FIG. The user operates the terminal 22 to
For a desired image block in image block units of the grid pattern 28, determine its macroblock number,
IMPORTANT Enter the macroblock number with the image block number IBi of one or more image blocks. Processor 18 uses MSIB table 40 in file 200
The macro block number and the image block number IBi that have been input are registered in 1. The image represented by the decoded image data can also be printed as a color image by the printer 20 by inputting an instruction from the terminal 22.

When the image block reproduction mode is set from the terminal 22 and the desired file number to be reproduced is inputted and then the desired macroblock number to be reproduced is inputted, the processor 18 corresponds to the inputted number. The compressed data 101 of the macro block number of the file 200 to be read is read and transferred to the decoder 21. As a result, the decoder 21 expands the read compressed data 101, and the image of the macro block is enlarged to the size of the screen 27 and displayed on the screen 27 on the monitor TV 26. The macroblock image represented by the decoded image data can also be printed as a color image by the printer 20 by inputting an instruction from the terminal 22.

FIG. 7 shows an example of designation of an important image block (MSIB) in this embodiment. Figure 8 shows the conventional TIFF
FIG. 6 is a diagram conceptually showing an example of image data in an image file created in the (Tag Image File Format) format as a visible image. According to this, the image area of one whole screen
The image data of each of 600 and the rectangular portion 601 as the region of interest is stored as two files, that is, image file data IFD # 1 and IFD # 2, respectively. This conventional example is inferior to FIG. 7 in the following points even in the case of non-compression. In the example of FIG. 8, first, the image data of the region of interest 601 is partially overlapped with the data 600 of the entire image, and thus the data IFD # 2 exists only for extracting the region of interest. The original image data is redundant and redundant. Therefore, the file size is large accordingly. Further, the region of interest 601 must be rectangular, and the region of interest cannot be extracted finely as compared with the image file format of this embodiment in which the region of interest can be designated as an important block in image block units.

FIG. 9 shows an example of setting the important block MSIB in the case of the ID photograph. In a photograph taken by the self-automatic photographing device, a person, particularly a face portion is often located at the same position on the screen in any photographing. When the face is an important block, the important block 31 can be fixedly set by setting a worst area 31 which is slightly wider than the minimum necessary portion 30 in consideration of height or sitting height. In this way, the important block 31 is fixedly installed as a device.
If you set it to 10, after that, you can shoot without worrying about the position of important blocks, and automatically perform image compression and file saving. Such fixed setting of the important block 31 can be performed from the terminal 22. in this case,
A fixed value designating the block number of the important block is written in the MSIB table 401 of the file 200 for each image by the processor 18 each time the image is taken.

FIG. 10 conceptually shows an application example to image division. When a plurality of screens of two or more frames are combined and created, for example, in the case of a moving image such as an animation, the background and a moving person can be designated as important blocks MSIB and combined. In this embodiment, the screen of m (natural number) images is divided into, for example, three parts, and desired divided portions are combined between the respective screens to create an m ³ screen from the m screens. Such important blocks are designated from the terminal 22, and the processor 18 determines the MS of the divided portion designated by the terminal 22 from the file 200 of each image.
The IB table 401 is searched and the image data 101 of those important blocks are read out and combined as one image and displayed on the monitor TV 26.

It is also possible to edit only the region of interest for many images to create a small screen file, that is, an image index. Such an index image is searched for in an important block, so that its display on the monitor TV 26 is quick.

[0027]

As described above, according to the present invention, the image pickup screen is divided into a plurality of image blocks, the blocks are recorded in the image file as independent compressed data, and the region of interest is defined by the macro block number and the image block number. By registering, the data amount of the image file is smaller than that of the conventional image file. Since the region of interest can be set to the minimum for each image block and the minimum region of interest can be reproduced, partial reproduction of only the region of interest in one screen can be easily performed and data redundancy can be improved. Low, the amount of data in the region of interest is small. Therefore, the reproduction time is shortened as compared with the conventional method in which reproduction of the entire screen is required to reproduce the region of interest.

For example, when creating an animation, each of a plurality of screens is divided into a plurality of macroblocks and recorded, and the macroblocks of different screens are combined to reduce the total number of created screens. The period is shortened.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing an embodiment of a digital image file system according to the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a plan view showing an image block of a light receiving surface of the electronic still camera of FIG. 1 for explaining horizontal scanning.

3 is a diagram conceptually showing a data format of an image signal and an image block number output from the electronic still camera of FIG.

4 is a diagram conceptually showing a data format of compressed data and an image block number output from the encoder of FIG.

5 is a diagram showing a configuration example of an image file in the embodiment of FIG.

6 is a diagram showing an example of images and image blocks displayed on the screen of the monitor TV of FIG.

FIG. 7 is a diagram showing an example of setting of an important block in the embodiment shown in FIG.

FIG. 8 is a diagram showing how to set a region of interest in a conventional example.

9 is a diagram showing an example of setting important blocks of a self-photograph in the embodiment shown in FIG.

FIG. 10 is a diagram conceptually showing an example of image division in the embodiment.

[Explanation of symbols]

10 Digital Image File System 11 Electronic still camera 13 Block number generator 14 encoder 17 file memory 18 processors 19 Program memory 21 Decoder 22 terminals 23 Video signal generator 26 monitor TV

─────────────────────────────────────────────────── ─── Continuation of the front page (56) Reference JP-A-59-216190 (JP, A) JP-A-2-195480 (JP, A) JP-A-63-191279 (JP, A) JP-A-3- 132878 (JP, A) JP 5-35847 (JP, A) JP 1-159768 (JP, A) JP 4-253280 (JP, A) JP 5-274371 (JP, A) JP-A-3-164980 (JP, A) JP-A-58-168088 (JP, A) JP-A-4-147381 (JP, A) (58) Fields investigated (Int.Cl. ⁷ , DB name) G06T 1/00 G06F 17/30 G09G 5/36 G06F 3/14-3/153

Claims (6)

(57) [Claims] 1. An image signal input means for receiving an image signal representing an image of one screen, and a region of one screen for the image signal is divided into a plurality of blocks having the same size, and each of the plurality of blocks is uniquely divided. Block identification display generation means for generating an assigned identification display, storage means having a first area for storing the image signals of the plurality of blocks in block units, and reading out the image signals stored in the storage means A reproducing means for visualizing an image represented by the image signal, and a duplication in a region of one screen visualized by the reproducing means.
Indicates the boundaries between adjacent blocks for a number of blocks
A lattice pattern generating means for generating a grid pattern, the price on one screen of the image visualized by said reproducing means
Superimposes the grid pattern generated by the child pattern generation means
And a specifying means for specifying, based on the lattice pattern a plurality of blocks constituting an interest region that is part on the image, and control means for controlling said memory means and reproducing means in response to said designating means Including, the storage means is provided with a second area for storing the identification display of the block designated by the designating means, the control means refers to the second area of the storage means,
An image of a block corresponding to the retrieved identification display is searched for among the identification displays stored in the second area, the identification display corresponding to a plurality of blocks constituting the region of interest designated by the designating means. A digital image file system, wherein a signal is read from a first area and an image represented by an image signal of the read block is visualized by the reproducing means. 2. The system according to claim 1, wherein the identification display stored in the second area can be variably set, and the system has setting means for manually setting the identification display. A digital image file system comprising :. 3. The digital image file system according to claim 1, wherein the identification display stored in the second area is fixedly set. 4. The system according to claim 1, wherein the system includes a compression unit that compresses the image signal in block units, and the storage unit stores the image signals of the plurality of blocks in a compressed form. A digital image file system characterized by storing. 5. The digital image file system according to claim 4, wherein the reproducing means includes a decoding means for expanding the image signal read from the storage means. 6. A step of preparing an image signal representing an image of one screen, a step of dividing a region of one screen for the image signal into a plurality of blocks having the same size, and a step unique to each of the plurality of blocks. A step of allocating an identification display; a step of storing the image signals of the plurality of blocks in block units in a first area of the storage means; and a step of reading out an image signal of one screen stored in the storage means Of visualizing the image represented by the reproducing means , and the area of the one screen in the one screen visualized by the reproducing means.
Between adjacent blocks for multiple blocks in
A step of superimposing a grid pattern indicating the boundary, the steps of a plurality of blocks constituting an interest region is Ru contained in the visualized images <br/> specified based on the grid pattern by the reproducing means, is the designated Storing the identification indications of the plurality of blocks in the second area of the storage means, and referring to the second area of the storage means, the region of interest of the identification indications stored in the second area And a step of searching for an identification display corresponding to a plurality of blocks forming the block, the image signal of the block corresponding to the searched identification display is read from the first area, and the image represented by the read image signal of the block is read. And a step of visualizing the image by the reproducing means.