Electronic device including blurred finger image deblurring circuitry and related methods

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9659209-B2
Application number	US-201615235533-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Aug 12, 2016
Priority date	Aug 6, 2013
Publication date	May 23, 2017
Grant date	May 23, 2017

Abstract

An electronic device may include a finger biometric sensor that may include an array of electric field sensing pixels and image data output circuitry coupled thereto. The electronic device may also include a dielectric layer over the array of electric field sensing pixels and causing electric field diffusion so that the image data output circuitry generates image data corresponding to a blurred finger image. The electronic device may also include deblurring circuitry coupled to the image data output circuitry and capable of processing the image data to produce processed image data representative of a deblurred finger image.

First claim

That which is claimed is:

1. An electronic device comprising:
a finger biometric sensor comprising an array of electric field sensing pixels;
a dielectric layer above the array of electric field sensing pixels and having a non-uniform thickness; and
deblurring circuitry coupled to finger biometric sensor and configured to
store a plurality of deblurring coefficients associated with the non-uniform thickness of the dielectric layer, and
process image data from the finger biometric sensor based upon the plurality of deblurring coefficients.

2. The electronic device of claim 1 , wherein the plurality of deblurring coefficients are for an inverse Gaussian function.

3. The electronic device of claim 1 , wherein the deblurring circuitry comprises a deblurring processor and a memory coupled thereto.

4. The electronic device of claim 3 , wherein the deblurring processor and memory are configured to process the image data to account for the non-uniform thickness of the dielectric layer.

5. The electronic device of claim 1 , wherein the dielectric layer has a non-uniform thickness in a range of 100-500 microns.

6. An electronic device comprising:
a finger biometric sensor comprising an array of electric field sensing pixels;
a dielectric layer above the array of electric field sensing pixels and having a non-uniform thickness;
drive circuitry coupled to the array of electric field sensing pixels; and
deblurring circuitry coupled to the array of electric field sensing pixels and configured to
store a plurality of deblurring coefficients associated with the non-uniform thickness of the dielectric layer, and
process image data based upon the plurality of deblurring coefficients to account for the non-uniform thickness of the dielectric layer.

7. The electronic device of claim 6 , wherein the plurality of deblurring coefficients are for an inverse Gaussian function.

8. The electronic device of claim 6 , wherein the finger biometric sensor comprises a finger coupling electrode adjacent the array of electric field sensing pixels and coupled to the drive circuitry.

9. The electronic device of claim 6 , wherein the deblurring circuitry comprises a deblurring processor and a memory coupled thereto.

10. The electronic device of claim 6 , wherein the dielectric layer has a non-uniform thickness in a range of 100-500 microns.

11. A finger biometric sensing method comprising:
generating image data using a finger biometric sensor comprising an array of electric field sensing pixels, a dielectric layer above the array of electric field sensing pixels and having a non-uniform thickness; and
processing the image data based upon a plurality of stored deblurring coefficients associated with the non-uniform thickness of the dielectric layer.

12. The method of claim 11 , wherein the plurality of deblurring coefficients are for an inverse Gaussian function.

13. The method of claim 11 , wherein the dielectric layer has a non-uniform thickness in a range of 100-500 microns.

14. A non-transitory computer readable medium for finger biometric processing, the non-transitory computer readable medium comprising computer-executable instructions for performing operations comprising:
generating image data using a finger biometric sensor comprising an array of electric field sensing pixels, a dielectric layer above the array of electric field sensing pixels and having a non-uniform thickness; and
processing the image data based upon a plurality of stored deblurring coefficients associated with the non-uniform thickness of the dielectric layer.

15. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 14 , wherein the plurality of deblurring coefficients are for an inverse Gaussian function.

16. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 14 , wherein the dielectric layer has a non-uniform thickness in a range of 100-500 microns.

Assignees

• Apple Inc

Inventors

• Setlak Dale R
• Gozzini Giovanni
• Subert Martin
• Kohout Petr
• Mrazek Pavel

Classifications

• G06V40/1347 Primary

  Preprocessing; Feature extraction · CPC title

• G06V10/30

  Noise filtering · CPC title

• G06V40/1306

  non-optical, e.g. ultrasonic or capacitive sensing · CPC title

• G06T5/20

  using local operators · CPC title

• G06T2207/30196

  Human being; Person · CPC title