Recent Patents in Signal Processing (February 2018) – Image and Video Compression

For our February 2018 issue, we cover recent patents granted in the area of image and video compression

In patent no. 9,866,835 devices and methods for obtaining borehole images at a surface installation while a borehole-imaging downhole tool is logging a borehole are provided. One such method may involve, while the downhole tool is disposed in the borehole, obtaining a first borehole image at a first depth of investigation using the borehole-imaging downhole tool. Compression electronics may compress the first borehole image to obtain a first compressed borehole image. Compressing the first borehole image may involve exploiting a symmetry characteristic of the first borehole image to increase compression efficiency or exploiting a similarity of the first borehole image with a second borehole image to increase compression efficiency, or both. The compressed borehole image then may be efficiently transmitted to the surface installation via a telemetry system.

In patent no. 9,866,656 a method is disclosed for providing compressed video to a personal electronic device of a user using one of a plurality of different video compression protocols, and wherein the personal electronic device has a web browser. The method may involve using the personal electronic device to transmit a request for video content from a server via a remotely located controller. The controller may be used to serve up HTML5 client code to the browser. The browser may use the HTML5 client code to create a web socket connection with the server and to establish a web socket in the browser. The HTML5 client code, the web socket connection and the web socket may be used to receive the compressed video, and the HTML5 client code may be used to decompress the compressed video for display on the personal electronic device.

The invention no. 9,865,081 presents methods, apparatuses and systems directed to using viewport state data objects (VSDO) to render a series of video frames according to render instructions to achieve video compression. In a particular implementation, the video compression format exposes the VSDO and render instructions to a video render client, allowing the video render client to finish rendering a sequence of video frames from different spatial locations and view transform parameters. Implementations of this video compression format further allow any arbitrary client with enough graphics processing power and bandwidth to retransmit novel, completely rendered viewports to thin clients without taxing the root remote render devices.

Patent no. 9,860,606 introduces systems and methods for fixed delay video switching. One embodiment of the system describes a fixed delay video communication link, which includes: a real-time video encoder (RT-VE) that receives an incoming high-definition uncompressed video (HD-UV), compresses the incoming HD-UV into first or second HD compressed video, and transmits the HD compressed video over a communication link to a real-time video decoder (RT-VD). The RT-VD decompresses the HD compressed video into an outgoing HD-UV. And wherein on-the-fly switches between the first and second compression ratios, while continuing to receive the incoming HD-UV uninterruptedly, are both visually lossless and maintain the same fixed delay between corresponding pixels of the incoming HD-UV and the outgoing HD-UV.

Patent no. 9,860,565 presents an apparatus including a first circuit and a second circuit. The first circuit may be configured to transform an image block into a plurality of transform coefficients. The second circuit may be configured in each of a plurality of modes to (i) quantize the transform coefficients to calculate a plurality of quantized coefficients, (ii) translate a number of non-zero values of the quantized coefficients to a rate value, where the translation is a non-linear translation, (iii) calculate a distortion value (a) based on the transform coefficients and (b) independent of a plurality of inverse quantized coefficients corresponding to the quantized coefficients, and (iv) calculate a score of a current mode of the plurality of modes to encode the image block based on the rate value and the distortion value.

The invention no. 9,854,247 introduces a moving image compression device, which has an obtaining unit, an image conversion unit, and a compression processing unit. The obtaining unit obtains a RAW moving image having plural frames associated in an order of imaging, the frames having pixels of three different color components which are disposed periodically according to a color array with two rows and two columns. The image conversion unit separates, in a target frame, a first pixel group corresponding to a first color component of odd rows and a second pixel group corresponding to the first color component of even rows, and alternately arrays, in a time base direction, a first image including the first pixel group and a second image including the second pixel group. The compression processing unit performs inter-frame prediction coding compression on the first image and the second image.

In petent no. 9,854,235 methods and devices for decoding, in a video decoder, a block of enhancement-layer transform domain data for an enhancement-layer encoded video and corresponding to a reconstructed block of reference-layer transform domain data, are provided. The method includes determining a context for an enhancement-layer element based, at least in part, upon elements in the corresponding reconstructed block of reference-layer transform domain data, wherein the elements are identified by a template and wherein the position of the template in the reference-layer reconstructed block is based upon the position of that enhancement-layer element in the block of enhancement-layer transform domain data.

In the patent no. 9,842,410 image processing may include separating a noise component from an original image resulting in a de-noised image and determining a noise parameterization for the noise component. The de-noised image and the noise parameterization may be compressed.

If you have an interesting patent to share when we next feature patents related to image and video compression, 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 Csaba Benedek (benedek.csaba AT sztaki DOT mta DOT hu).

References

Number: 9,866,835
Title: Borehole image compression
Inventors: Gelman; Andriy (Somerville, MA), Kusuma; Julius (Arlington, MA)
Issued: January 9, 2018
Assignee: Schlumberger Technology Corporation, Sugar Land, TX, US

Number: 9,866,656
Title: System and method for single KVM client accommodating multiple different video compression technologies
Inventors: Siegman; Craig S. (Pembroke Pines, FL), Amirthasamy; Joseph (Plantation, FL), Griffin; George N. (Coral Springs, FL)
Issued: January 9, 2018
Assignee: Avocent Huntsville, LLC (Huntsville, AL)

Number: 9,865,081
Title: Re-utilization of render assets for video compression
Inventors: Urbach; Julian Michael (Los Angeles, CA)
Issued: January 9, 2018

Number: 9,860,606
Title: Maintaining a fixed delay while switching between light video compression ratios
Inventors: Lida; Eyran (Kfar Ha-Oranim, IL)
Issued: January 2, 2018
Assignee: Valens Semiconductor Ltd. (Hod Hasharon, IL)

Number: 9,860,565
Title: Low cost rate-distortion computations for video compression
Inventors: Linzer; Elliot N. (Bergenfield, NY), Huang; Hsiang-Chun (Hsinchu County, TW)
Issued: January 2, 2018
Assignee: Ambarella, Inc. (Santa Clara, CA)

Number: 9,854,247
Title: Moving image compression device, moving image decoding device, image compression device, image decoding device, imaging device, and non-transitory medium storing program
Inventors: Ando; Ichiro (Yokosuka, JP)
Issued: December 26, 2017
Assignee: Nikon Corporation (Tokyo, JP)

Number: 9,854,235
Title: Methods and devices for entropy coding in scalable video compression
Inventors: Wang; Jing (Waterloo, CA), He; Dake (Waterloo, CA), Yu; Xiang (Kitchener, CA), Ji; Tianying (Toronto, CA)
Issued: December 26, 2017
Assignee: BlackBerry Limited (Waterloo, Ontario, CA)

Number: 9,842,410
Title: Image compression and decompression with noise separation
Inventors: Brothers; John W. (Calistoga, CA)
Issued: December 12, 2017
Assignee: Samsung Electronics CO., LTD. (KR)