The present invention relates to a digital hologram processing technique and more particular to an apparatus and method for encoding or/and decoding a digital hologram.
According to development of digital image industry, a high definition television (HDTV) was developed to provide high quality images for satisfying visual sensation of human. Furthermore, various three dimensional (3-D) displaying methods have been developed to display images three-dimensionally. Such a three dimensional image displaying method is classified whether a 3-D glass is required to wear or not when a viewer watches a three-dimensional image. Recently, there are many studies in progress to develop a three dimensional image displaying method not requiring such a 3-D glass and giving no fatigue to a viewer although a viewer watches a three-dimensional image for long time without wearing the 3-D glass.
A representative three-dimensional displaying method satisfying the above condition is a holography method. The holography method has been widely known as an ideal method for displaying three-dimensional image.
A term “hologram” is combined with a “HOLOS” which means “Whole” in Greek and a “GRAM” which means “message” in Greek. The hologram is obtained by flattening information of three-dimension image. That is, three-dimension information is flattened to two-dimensional information, and the two-dimensional information is reproduced to three-dimensional image. That is, the hologram is displaying of object's three-dimensional property which is formed of wave surfaces of light reflected from the object using coherency of light. A hologram denotes recording of the three-dimensional property of an object in two-dimensional film. A holography denotes displaying of the three-dimensional property of an object in three-dimensions.
A hologram is different from a picture. It is possible to form an astral world in an identical hologram as like as watching an object through a microscope. Also, an image can be reproduced in an empty space by the hologram. Furthermore, natural colors of spectrum can be reproduced through the hologram. However, the hologram has shortcomings. That is, a high-density hologram film must be used for generating a hologram because the hologram is a picture taking technique recording coherent waves of light. Also, the hologram must be created or reproduced as single color image since coherent patterns are recorded. Furthermore, the hologram is embodied as a still image only.
Recently, a computer generated hologram (CGH) is developed as a method for creating, storing, transmitting and image-processing a hologram using a computer. And, there are also many other methods in progress for obtaining a digital hologram using a high definition charge coupled device (CCD) instead of a holographic film, and storing, transmitting and displaying the obtained digital hologram.
However, it is very difficult to store and transmit the CGH or digital holograms obtained through the CCD because such a digital hologram includes mass amount of information compared to original three-dimensional object.
It is, therefore, an object of the present invention to provide an apparatus and method for encoding or/and decoding a digital hologram to reduce an amount of information of the digital hologram.
It is another object of the present invention to provide an apparatus and method for decoding an encoded digital hologram.
It is still another object of the present invention to provide an apparatus and method for encoding a digital hologram to reduce an amount of information of the digital hologram, and decoding the encoded digital hologram.
In accordance with one aspect of the present invention, there is provided an apparatus for encoding a digital hologram including: a segmentation unit for dividing a digital hologram inputted from an external device into a plurality of blocks; an orthogonal transforming unit for orthogonally transforming each of the divided blocks; a quantization unit for quantizing information of each of the transformed blocks; a scanning unit for scanning each of the quantized blocks to transform the plurality of the quantized blocks to single moving image sequence; and a moving image encoding unit for encoding the single moving image sequence configuring a digital hologram to compress the signal moving image sequence.
In accordance with another aspect of the present invention, there is provided an apparatus for decoding a digital hologram including: a moving image decoding unit for decoding an encoded digital hologram inputted from an external device to convert the encoded digital hologram to single moving image sequence; a inverse-scanning unit for performing a inverse-scanning operation on the single moving image sequence to arrange each of blocks to corresponding locations; a inverse-quantization unit for performing a inverse-quantization operation on each of the inverse-scanned blocks; a inverse-orthogonal transforming unit for inverse-orthogonal transforming each of the quantized blocks; and a inverse-segmentation unit for performing a inverse-segmentation operation on each of the inverse-transformed blocks to merge the plurality of inverse-transformed blocks to single digital hologram.
In accordance with still another aspect of the present invention, there is provided an apparatus for encoding/decoding a digital hologram including: a segmentation unit for dividing a digital hologram inputted from an external device into a plurality of blocks; an orthogonal transforming unit for orthogonally transforming each of the divided blocks; a quantization unit for quantizing information of each of the transformed blocks; a scanning unit for scanning each of the quantized blocks to transform the plurality of the quantized blocks to single moving image sequence; a moving image encoding unit for encoding the single moving image sequence configuring a digital hologram to compress the signal moving image sequence; a moving image decoding unit for decoding the encoded digital hologram from the moving image encoding unit to convert the encoded digital hologram to single moving image sequence; a inverse-scanning unit for performing a inverse-scanning operation on the single moving image sequence to arrange each of blocks to corresponding locations; a inverse-quantization unit for performing a inverse-quantization operation on each of the inverse-scanned blocks; a inverse-orthogonal transforming unit for inverse-orthogonal transforming each of the quantized blocks; and a inverse-segmentation unit for performing a inverse-segmentation operation on each of the inverse-transformed blocks to merge the plurality of inverse-transformed blocks to single digital hologram.
In accordance with further another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method for encoding a digital hologram in a digital hologram encoding apparatus including the steps of: a) dividing a digital hologram into a plurality of blocks having a predetermined size; b) orthogonal-transforming each of the divided blocks; c) quantizing each of information in the transformed blocks to computer-processable values; d) converting each of the quantized blocks to single moving image sequence by scanning each of the quantized blocks; and e) encoding the single moving image sequence configuring a digital hologram to compress the digital hologram.
In accordance with further still another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method for decoding a digital hologram including the steps of: a) decoding an encoded digital hologram to single moving image sequence configuring a digital hologram; b) inverse-scanning the single moving image sequence to arrange each of blocks to corresponding locations; c) inverse-quantizing each of the inverse-scanned blocks; d) inverse-orthogonal transforming each of the inverse-quantized blocks; and e) inverse-segmenting each of the inverse-transformed blocks to merge the plurality of the inverse-transformed blocks to a digital hologram.
A mass amount of information in a digital hologram can be reduced by encoding and decoding a digital hologram obtained from three-dimensional object using a CGH generation algorithm or a digital hologram obtaining apparatus according to the present invention.
The above and other objects and features of the present invention will become apparent from the following description of the preferred embodiments given in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which:
Other objects and aspects of the invention will become apparent from the following description of the embodiments with reference to the accompanying drawings, which is set forth hereinafter.
Referring to
Hereinafter, a detailed structure and operations of the apparatus for encoding a digital hologram will be described.
At first, a current digital hologram may be a computer generated hologram (CGH), or may be obtained through a high resolution charge coupled device (CCD). Furthermore, the current digital hologram may be obtained by any other methods.
It assumes that the digital hologram is created by a CGH generation algorithm or obtained from a digital hologram obtaining apparatus, and the digital hologram inputs to the segmentation unit 11.
The segmentation unit 11 receives the digital hologram and divides the received digital hologram into a plurality of blocks. That is, the segmentation unit 11 divides the digital hologram into the blocks each to have a predetermined size that provides a high encoding-efficiency of the digital hologram. As an example of the block size,
The orthogonal transforming unit 12 orthogonally transforms each of the divided blocks. That is, the orthogonal transforming unit 12 uses an orthogonal transforming function to transform the divided blocks. The orthogonal transforming function may be one of a discrete cosine transform (DCT), a fast fourier transform (FFT), a wavelet transform, a karhunen-loeve transform (KLT), a hadamard transform, a slant transform, a fresnel transform, and a fraunhofer transform. As a result of orthogonal transforming, three-dimensional images of the object are created. The created three-dimensional images are similar to watching the object from a location of each block.
Each of the orthogonal-transformed blocks includes information of floating point value. The quantization unit 13 performs a quantization operation on each of the orthogonal-transformed blocks to transform information of floating point value to a value of the finite number processable to a computer. That is, information of the each block is expressed as a floating point value, and the quantization unit 13 quantizes the information to a computer-processable value such as an integer value or a natural number. Such information of the orthogonal-transformed block is converted through the quantization to information processable by a computer.
As described above, the apparatus for encoding a digital hologram according to the present invention is distinguished from a general encoding scheme. In order to clearly show the present invention, each of steps to encode the digital hologram according to the present invention is explained with referenced to
In order to approximates the floating point value of information to a finite value processable by a computer, the quantization unit 13 uses one of a linear scalar quantization method and a quantization table method. The linear scalar quantization method regularly performs a quantization operation according to a constant quantization step (∇q). The quantization table method performs the quantization operation according to quantization step defined in a quantization table.
The scanning unit 14 scans each of the quantized blocks for converting the quantized blocks to single moving image sequence. That is, the scanning unit 14 re-arranges the two-dimensionally arranged blocks to a one-dimension by scanning the blocks. As a result, the single moving image sequence is generated. That is, the scanning unit 14 generates a moving image stream by scanning the images of blocks.
As an example of scanning, a zig-zeg scanning or a Hilbert scanning may be used. Such a scanning method is shown in
As further another scanning method, blocks of even columns and blocks of odd columns may be alternatively scanned in a right direction and a left direction, respectively. Such a scanning method may also reduce a size of shift or variation vector in the moving image encoding unit 15.
The moving image encoding unit 15 encodes the single moving image sequence configuring the digital hologram and outputs the encoded digital hologram. That is, the moving image encoding unit 15 uses a moving picture encoding algorithm such a MPEG to encode the blocks arranged in one dimension in order to compress the digital hologram.
As described above, the apparatus for encoding a digital hologram according to the present invention minimizes an amount of information included in the digital hologram by compressing the digital hologram through encoding the digital hologram.
As shown in
Hereinafter, a detailed structure and operations of the apparatus for decoding a digital hologram according to the present invention will be described.
An encoded digital hologram, which is encoded to reduce an amount of information, inputs to a moving image decoding unit 21. The encoded digital hologram may be stored in a memory or may be transferred to the moving image decoding unit 21 through a communication network.
The moving image decoding unit 21 uses a decoder prepared as a pair with an encoder of the moving image encoding unit 15 to decode contents configured with single stream. Herein, the moving image decoding unit 21 decodes an input stream to a single moving image sequence shown in
The inverse-scanning unit 22 converts images of blocks configured as the single moving image sequence shown in
By performing the inverse-scanning as described above, two-dimensional image is generated as shown in
The inverse-quantization unit 23 converts scales of each block information value. Each of blocks is configured with integer values, and the inverse-quantization unit 23 inversely performs the quantization operation of the quantization unit 13 on each of blocks. For example, a quantization step (∇q) of the quantization unit 13 is multiplied to each of the block to approximate the integer values of blocks to result values of the orthogonal transforming unit 12.
The inverse-orthogonal transforming unit 24 transforms each of the blocks to digital holograms. Herein, the inverse-orthogonal transforming unit 24 performs inverse function of an orthogonal transform function used in the orthogonal transforming unit 12.
The inverse-segmentation unit 25 converts the each of blocks to single digital hologram. That is, the inverse-segmentation unit 25 generates the digital hologram similar to an original image before encoding.
Hereinafter, operations of a method for encoding and/or decoding a digital hologram according to the present invention will be described with reference to
Referring to
The orthogonal transforming unit 21 orthogonal-transforms each of the divided blocks at step S102.
The quantization unit 13 performs a quantization on floating point values of information in each of the transformed blocks to computer-processable values at step S103.
The scanning unit 14 scans each of the quantized blocks to convert each of the quantized blocks to single moving image sequence at step S104.
The moving image encoding unit 15 encodes the single moving image sequence configuring a digital hologram in order to compress the digital hologram at step S105.
Referring to
The inverse-scanning unit 22 performs an inverse-scanning operation on the single moving image sequence to arrange each of blocks at corresponding locations at step S112.
The inverse-quantization unit 23 performs the inverse-quantization operation on each of the inverse-scanned blocks at step S113.
The inverse-orthogonal transforming unit 24 inverse-transforms the each of the inverse-quantized blocks at step S114.
The inverse-segmentation unit 25 performs the inverse-segmentation operation to merge a plurality of inverse-transformed blocks to single digital hologram at step S115.
Meanwhile, the apparatus for encoding a digital hologram and the apparatus for decoding a digital hologram may be combined as one system for encoding/decoding a digital hologram. Furthermore, the method for encoding a digital hologram and the method for decoding a digital hologram may be embodied in one system.
The above described method according to the present invention can be embodied as a program and stored on a computer readable recording medium. The computer readable recording medium is any data storage device that can store data which can be thereafter read by the computer system. The computer readable recording medium includes a read-only memory (ROM), a random-access memory (RAM), a CD-ROM, a floppy disk, a hard disk and an optical magnetic disk.
The present application contains subject matter related to Korean patent application No. 2005-0024788, filed with the Korean Intellectual Property office on Mar. 25, 2005, the entire contents of which is incorporated herein by reference.
While the present invention has been described with respect to certain preferred embodiments, it will be apparent to those skilled in the art that various changes and modifications may be made without departing from the scope of the invention as defined in the following claims.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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10-2005-0024788 | Mar 2005 | KR | national |
Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind | 371c Date |
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PCT/KR2005/003218 | 9/28/2005 | WO | 00 | 2/11/2009 |