The technology described in this patent document relates generally to the fields of image processing, video and graphics. More particularly, the patent document describes video enhancement systems and methods.
The image quality of many video sources is low and not subjectively sharp. This can be the result of various factors, such as poor initial recording, video compression low-pass filtering, and/or other post processing. In accordance with the teachings described herein, systems and methods are provided for enhancing the image quality of video. One or more filters may be used to filter a received video signal to generate a vertical filtered output, a horizontal filtered output and a diagonal filtered output. One or more amplification components may be used to apply separate gains to each of the vertical, horizontal and diagonal filtered outputs to generate a vertical enhancement signal, a horizontal enhancement signal and a diagonal enhancement signal. One or more summation components may be used to combine the vertical, horizontal and diagonal enhancement signals with the video signal to generate an enhanced video signal.
Only the R channel 60 is shown in
The edge enhancement amplification component 80 receives three edge enhancement gain settings: a vertical setting, a horizontal setting and a diagonal setting. The edge enhancement gain settings are applied to the edge pixels to generate vertical, horizontal and vertical edge enhanced signals 88. Similarly, the texture enhancement amplification component 82 receives vertical, horizontal and diagonal texture enhancement gain settings, which are applied to the texture pixels to generate vertical, horizontal and vertical texture enhanced signals 90. The edge and texture enhanced signals 88, 90 are combined with the summation component 84 to generate the vertical, horizontal and diagonal gain control signals (kV, kH and kD).
In operation, one of the Y signal 134 or the R, G or B component signal 136 is selected for processing using a multiplexer 138 that is controlled by a user input 140. The selected Y or RGB signal is filtered with one or more high pass filters 142 to generate vertical, horizontal and diagonal filtered outputs (HPF_V, HPF_H and HPF_D), and separate gains (kV, kH and kD) are applied to each of the vertical, horizontal and diagonal filtered outputs by one or more amplification elements 144. The enhanced vertical, horizontal and diagonal signals are combined with the R, G or B component signal 136 by one or more summation components 146 to generate an enhanced channel video signal (DER) 148.
The three channel processors 210 each receive one of an R, G or B video component 222, which is input to a high pass filter and noise thresholding element 224. The high pass filter and noise thresholding element 224 also receives a grayscale (Y) image 226 from the enhancement gain control element 220 and noise threshold 228 and RGB or Y selection 230 inputs. The RGB or Y selection input 230 selects one of the video component input 222 or the grayscale (Y) image 226 for processing. The selected image (RGB or Y) is high pass filtered and thresholded to reject noise to generate vertical, horizontal and diagonal filtered outputs (HPF_V, HPF_H and HPF_D). A more detailed diagram of an example high pass filter and noise thresholding element 224 is described below with reference to
Separate gains are applied to each of the vertical, horizontal and diagonal filtered outputs (HPF_V, HPF_H and HPF_D) by one or more amplification components 232 based on gain control signals (kV, kH, kD) received from the enhancement gain control element 220. The enhancement gain control element 220 generates the gain control signals (kV, kH, kD) as a function of vertical, horizontal and diagonal edge and texture enhancement inputs 234, 236. A more detailed diagram of an example enhancement gain control element 220 is described below with reference to
The vertical, horizontal and diagonal enhancement signals are bit shifted 238 and combined by a first summation element 240. The combined enhancement signal is clipped 242 to limit its bit width and is combined with the R, G or B component video signal 222 by a second summation element 244. The enhanced video signal (InEnh) is input to an overshoot control element 246, which controls the amount of allowable overshoot or undershoot based on edge, texture and edge/texture parameters to generate the enhanced component video signal (DEOut).
The overshoot control element 246 receives edge overshoot 248 and texture overshoot 250 user settings and a texture v. edge parameter 252, which are used to specify how much overshoot/undershoot is allowed compared to the local maximums and local minimums. In addition, the local maximums and local minimums are calculated for each pixel in the R, G or B component signal 222. From this data, the maximum and minimum overshoot/undershoot may be determined, for example using the following algorithm.
In the above algorithm, “TextureOrEdgeThres” is the texture v. edge threshold parameter 252, “EdgeOSLevel” is the edge overshoot input 248, “TextureOSLevel” is the texture overshoot input 250, max(local_window) is the local maximum and min(local_window) is the local minimum. The enhanced component video signal (DEOut) may be generated by clipping the enhanced video signal (InEnh) between the “maxvalue” and “minvalue” parameters calculated using the above algorithm.
The texture v. edge threshold parameter 252 may, for example, have a default value of 20, but may be programmable for flexibility. The overshoot control element 246 could also be used to simulate LTI/CTI by setting the edge and texture overshoot inputs 248, 250 near zero.
All of the HPF coefficients in the above matrices are a power of 2 so that implementation of the multiplication may be performed with simple bit shifts. In addition, all of the filters are designed to be high-pass in one direction and all-pass in the orthogonal direction. It should be understood, however, that other filter designs could also be used.
The HPF outputs are filtered by the noise thresholding components 266-269 to reject noise. The noise rejection threshold operation sets to zero any HPF output having a magnitude that is less than a user-defined noise threshold 270. If the HPF output is above the noise threshold 270, then the HPF magnitude is left unchanged.
After thresholding, the directional HPFs are divided by 4 (e.g., shifted by 2) to generate the horizontal, vertical and diagonal filtered outputs (HPFOutH, HPFOutV and HPFOutD). In addition, the outputs are clipped to between 31 and −31 to reduce the implementation size of the downstream components.
In operation, the enhancement gain control component 220 receives the three RGB component video signals and converts the component images to a grayscale (Y) image using an RGB to Y converter 280. The Y image may, for example, be calculated as follows.
The grayscale image (Y) is bit shifted and input to a mean absolute measure (MAM) component 282, which performs the following calculation.
In the above equation, “
The calculated MAM value is bit shifted and clipped to limit bit widths and is input to an edge look-up table (LUT) 284 and a texture look-up table (LUT) 286, which distinguish edge pixels from texture pixels. The edge and texture LUTs 284, 286 may, for example, be programmed by a host CPU, and may include values that are derived through experimentation to achieve an acceptable level of detail enhancement. Example default values for the edge and texture LUTs 284, 286 are as follows.
The outputs of the LUTs 284, 286 are multiplied by the respective edge and texture enhancement gain settings by multiplication components 288, 290. The output of the multiplication components 288, 290 is bit shifted and combined by one or more summation components 292 to generate the enhancement gain values (kV, kH, kD).
This written description uses examples to disclose the invention, including the best mode, and also to enable a person skilled in the art to make and use the invention. The patentable scope of the invention may include other examples that occur to those skilled in the art.
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