System and method for lens shading compensation

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9681026-B2
Application number	US-201414249892-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Apr 10, 2014
Priority date	Apr 15, 2013
Publication date	Jun 13, 2017
Grant date	Jun 13, 2017

Abstract

A method for performing lens shading compensation is provided. The method includes: receiving at least two series of source images of different exposure settings; performing first lens shading compensation on the at least two series of source images respectively; analyzing luminance distribution of the at least two series of compensated source images; composing a series of HDR images from the at least two series of compensated source images according to the luminance distribution; performing second lens shading compensation on the series of HDR image; and performing tone mapping on the series of compensated HDR images. A system for performing lens shading compensation is also provided.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method for performing lens shading compensation, comprising:
receiving at least two series of source images of different exposure settings;
performing first lens shading compensation on the at least two series of source images respectively;
analyzing luminance distribution of the at least two series of compensated source images;
composing a series of HDR images from the at least two series of compensated source images according to the luminance distribution;
performing second lens shading compensation on the series of HDR image; and
performing tone mapping on the series of compensated HDR images;
wherein the first lens shading compensation is performed by applying shading factors to the at least two series of source images, and result of the second lens shading compensation is fed back to adjust at least one of the shading factors of the first lens shading compensation;
wherein each of the first and second tens shading compensations is performed according to pixel positions and variance between color channels.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the shading factors are different for each of the color channels.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the step of analyzing luminance distribution further comprises:
determining an region of interest; and

analyzing luminance distribution of the region of interest of the at least two series of compensated source images.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the at least two series of images are received, analyzed and performed with the first lens shading compensation concurrently in parallel.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the method is implemented in a processing unit dedicated to perform processing in raw image domain and the series of HDR images are provided as a video sequence.

6. An image processing system, comprising:
a local lens shading compensation module configured to perform local lens shading compensation on at least two source images of different exposure settings;
an image analysis module, configured to receive the at least two compensated source images and compute image statics of the at least two compensated source images in parallel;
an HDR composition module, configured to generate an HDR image from the at least two compensated source images according to the image statics; and
a lens shading compensation module, configured to perform lens shading compensation on the HDR image;
wherein the at least two source images and the HDR image are processed in raw image domain, and wherein the local lens shading compensation module is further configured to feed back compensation result of the HDR image by the lens shading compensation module to adjust compensation level of the at least two source images;
wherein each of the local lens shading compensation and the local lens shading compensation on the HDR image is performed according to pixel positions and variance between color channels.

7. The image processing system of claim 6 , further comprising a tone mapping module configured to perform tone mapping on the compensated HDR image.

8. The image processing system of claim 6 , further comprising:
an image input module, configured to provide the at least two source images with different exposure settings concurrently;
a post-processing module, configured to convert the compensated HDR image from raw image format to RGB image format; and
a display unit, configured to display the converted HDR image.

9. The image processing system of claim 8 , wherein the image analysis module, the HDR composition module and the lens shading compensation module are implemented in a first processing unit dedicated to perform processing in raw image domain, and the post-processing module is implemented in a second processing unit configured to perform processing in other image domain.

10. The image processing system of claim 6 , wherein the local lens shading compensation module is configured to perform the local lens shading compensation on at least one of the color channels of the at least two source images.

11. The image processing system of claim 6 , wherein the image analysis module, the HDR composition module and the lens shading compensation module are implemented in a processing unit dedicated to perform processing in raw image domain.

12. A method for performing lens shading compensation, comprising:
receiving at least two source images of different exposure settings;
performing local lens shading compensation on the at least two source images respectively;
analyzing image statics of the at least two compensated source images;
composing at least an HDR image from the at least two compensated source images according to the image statics; and
performing lens shading compensation on the HDR image;
wherein the steps of analyzing image statics, composing the HDR image and performing lens shading compensation are executed in raw image domain, and wherein result of the lens shading compensation on HDR image is fed back to adjust compensation level of the local lens shading compensation;
wherein each of the local lens shading compensation and the lens shading compensation on the HDR image is performed according to pixel positions and variance between color channels.

13. The method of claim 12 , further comprising:
performing tone mapping on the compensated HDR image; and
converting the compensated HDR image from raw image domain to RGB image domain.

14. The method of claim 12 , wherein the at least two source images are retrieved from at least a first series of images of a first exposure setting and a second series of images of a second exposure setting captured concurrently in real time, and the HDR image is part of a video sequence and composed in real time.

15. The method of claim 14 , further comprising:
adjusting the first exposure setting and the second exposure setting according to luminance distribution of the compensated HDR image.

16. The method of claim 12 , wherein the step of performing lens shading compensation further comprises:
applying different compensation levels to the color channels of the HDR image

wherein the compensation levels are determined according to the pixel positions and differences between the color channels.

Assignees

• Htc Corp

Inventors

• Feng Wen-Chun

Classifications

• H04N25/589 Primary

  with different integration times, e.g. short and long exposures · CPC title

• H04N23/88

  for colour balance, e.g. white-balance circuits or colour temperature control · CPC title

• H04N23/741

  by increasing the dynamic range of the image compared to the dynamic range of the electronic image sensors · CPC title

• H04N25/611

  Correction of chromatic aberration · CPC title

• H04N23/73

  by influencing the exposure time · CPC title