Patent · US Active

System and method for estimating spatially varying defocus blur in a digital image

US8885941B2 · kind B2 · utility

12Cited by
2References
19Claims
0Family size

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Key dates

Filing dateJul 31, 2012
Grant dateNov 11, 2014
Priority date
Expiry dateMar 9, 2033

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC G)Physics
  • CPC primaryG06T2207/20076
  • WIPO fieldComputer technology
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

An image editing application (or a blur classification module thereof) may automatically estimate a coherent defocus blur map from a single input image. The application may represent the blur spectrum as a differentiable function of radius r, and the optimal radius may be estimated by optimizing the likelihood function through a gradient descent algorithm. The application may generate the spectrum function over r through polynomial-based fitting. After fitting, the application may generate look-up tables to store values for the spectrum and for its first and second order derivatives, respectively. The use of these tables in the likelihood optimization process may significantly reduce the computational costs of a given blur estimation exercise. The application may minimize an energy function that includes a data term, a smoothness term, and a smoothness parameter that is adaptive to local image content. The output blur map may be used for image object depth estimation.

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