Patent · US Expired

Method and apparatus for repurposing binary images

US6633411B1 · kind B1 · utility

10Cited by
8References
21Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateJul 6, 1998
Grant dateOct 14, 2003
Priority date
Expiry dateJul 6, 2018

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
  • CPC primaryH04N1/40075
  • WIPO fieldAudio-visual technology
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

A method, computer program product, and a program storage device readable by machine, for repurposing images includes classifying the pixels of a binary image as being either halftone image pixels or non-halftone image pixels, further processing the halftoned image pixels with halftone image pixel processing and combining the outputs of the halftone image pixel processing and non-halftone image pixel processing to prepare the images for a second purpose such as a second printer. The processing that classifies the binary pixels as being either halftone image pixels or non-halftone image pixels segments the image into regions of halftone image pixels and regions of non-halftone image pixels. The processing of regions of halftone image pixels first constructs an intermediate gray scale representation of the regions of halftone image pixels. The processing to construct the gray scale representation of the region of halftone image pixels estimates the primary periodicity of the values of the binary pixels within the region of halftone image pixels. The intermediate gray scale image is rehalftoned and combined with the non-halftone image to form the repurposed image.

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.