Recent Patents in Signal Processing (February 2012) - Perceptually Driven Multimedia Processing

For our February 2012 edition, we focus on the area of multimedia processing based on perceptual metrics. This topic is related to the recent Signal Processing Magazine Issue which covered new approaches to multimedia quality assessment. In recent years, especially in the area of image and video compression community, there has been a concerted effort towards optimizing compression performance with respect to metrics consistent with the human visual system. This is a departure from long-accepted, widely used measures such as Mean Squared Error, or Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) whose values do not always correspond with human perception.

Below, we cover a selection of patents issued in the recent past, that employ perceptual metrics in the processing of audio signals, image and video signals and holographic scenes. If you have an interesting patent to share when we next feature patents on multimedia quality assessment, or if you are especially interested in a signal processing research field that you would want to be highlighted in this section, please send email to Shantanu Rane (rane AT merl DOT com).

US 8094945, "Method for assessing image quality", by O. Le Meur, P. Le Callet and D. Barba, filed 5 May 2006, issued 10 January 2012, assigned to Thomson Licensing (Boulogne-Billancourt, France).

US 8098886, "Computation of intrinsic perceptual saliency in visual environments, and applications", by C. Koch and L. Itti, filed 8 May 2006, issued 17 January 2012, assigned to California Institute of Technology (Pasadena, CA).

US 8064517, "Perceptually adaptive quantization parameter selection", by E. Viscito and D. Hoang, filed 7 September 2007, issued 22 November 2011, assigned to Zenverge, Inc. (Cupertino, CA).

US 8036882, "Enhancing perceptual performance of SBR and related HFR coding methods by adaptive noise-floor addition and noise substitution limiting", by G. Liljeryd, K. Kjoerling, P. Ekstrand and F. Henn, filed 24 June 2009, issued 11 October 2011, assigned to Coding Technologies Sweden AB (Stockholm, Sweden).

US 8010370, "Bitrate control for perceptual coding", by F. Baumgarte, filed 28 July 2006, issued 30 August 2011, assigned to Apple Inc. (Cupertino, CA).

US 8049941, "Method for the compensation of an inhomogeneous brightness perception in holographically reconstructed scenes", by R. Haussler, filed 20 December 2006, issued 1 November 2011, assigned to SeeReal Technologies S.A. (Luxembourg).

US 7873514, "Method for quantizing speech and audio through an efficient perceptually relevant search of multiple quantization patterns", by S. Ramprashad, filed 7 August 2007, issued 18 January 2011, assigned to NTT DoCoMo, Inc. (Tokyo, Japan).

US 8094713, "Method and system for viewer quality estimation of packet video streams", by A. Clark, filed 16 July 2008, issued 10 January 2012, assigned to Telchemy, Inc. (Duluth, GA).

US 7965203, "Video quality estimation apparatus, method, and program", by K. Yamagishi and T. Hayashi, filed 28 November 2006, issued 21 June 2011, assigned to Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (Tokyo, JP).

US 8086007, "Method and system for human vision model guided medical image quality assessment", by M. Yan, T-C. Chang, M. Lendl, S. Boehm, T. Fang and P. Durlak, filed 3 October 2008, issued 27 December 2011, assigned to Siemens Aktiengesellschaft (Munich, Germany).