DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Election/Restrictions
Applicant’s election without traverse of Species I, claims 1-7, 11-12, and 14, in the reply filed on 8/14/2026 is acknowledged.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
Claim 1 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention. The limitation of “a first image with a first dynamic range, a second image with a second dynamic range” recited in claim 1 is not particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claim(s) 1, 7, 11-12, and 14 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kimura (PGPUB: 20200327649 A1) in view of Bonnier (WO 2024102337 A1), and further in view of PARK (WO 2017030311 A1).
Regarding claims 1, 12, and 14. Kimura teaches a processing apparatus, comprising:
a first generation unit configured to generate a first image with a first dynamic range from a shot image (see Fig. 1 paragraph 26, the image capturing apparatus 100 generates an HDR image by developing a captured image using the image processing unit 104);
a gain map generation unit configured to generate, based on the first image and the second image, a gain map for converting a dynamic range of the second image into the first dynamic range (see Fig. 7, paragraph 62 and 63, the gamma conversion unit 401 executes conversion processing on an input HDR image to the SDR image gamma. The gamma conversion processing is the same as the processing at the step S602 described above, and thus the description of the processing is omitted. However, at the step S701, along with the gamma conversion processing, linear scaling processing from the HDR image dynamic range to the SDR image dynamic range is also executed; the local tone mapping processing unit 402 executes local tone mapping processing on the image subjected to the gamma conversion at the step S701. In the local tone mapping processing, with varying the brightness of the dark portion or bright portion, processing is executed to increase the contrast with a luminance region where tone compression or the like is to take place. In the local tone mapping processing, a general method may be used in which determination results for images or regions in different frequency bands are used to generate a gain MAP having locally varying gradation characteristics and tone processing is executed with reference to the gain MAP); and
an association unit configured to associate the gain map with the second image (see Fig. 13, paragraph 65, is an example of gradation characteristics used in the local tone mapping. The input signal is a signal resulting from the conversion to the SDR gamma at the step S701, and the output signal is an output signal targeted for the local tone mapping processing).
However, Kimura does not expressly teach a second generation unit configured to generate a second image with a second dynamic range from the shot image.
Bonnier teaches that a step 220 that involves the computing device 102 accessing a multi-channel SDR image 221. As shown in FIG. 2B, the multi-channel SDR image 221 is composed of pixels 222 (and sub-pixels 224) similar to the pixels 212 (and sub-pixels 214) of the multi-channel HDR image 211 illustrated in FIG. 2A. According to some embodiments, the multi-channel SDR image 221 is a singleexposure capture of the same scene captured by the multi-channel HDR image 211, such that the multi-channel SDR image 221 and the multi-channel HDR image 211 are substantially related to one another (see Fig. 2A and 2B, paragraph 29).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Kimura by Bonnier to obtain the multi-channel SDR image 221 is a singleexposure capture of the same scene captured by the multi-channel HDR image 211, in order to provide a second generation unit configured to generate a second image with a second dynamic range from the shot image. Therefore, combining the elements from prior arts according to known methods and technique would yield predictable results.
The combination does not expressly teach that a reduction unit configured to apply first noise reduction processing to the gain map.
PARK teaches that the transform unit 130 applies a smoothing filter to the mapping function to remove noise (step) of an image generated by inverse tone mapping (iTM). Can be removed, and the dynamic range of the converted image can be increased (see page 9, lines 12-15); the electronic device 100 may use a curved mapping function using an iTM to extend the dynamic range of the first image to convert it into a second image. In addition, the electronic device 100 may apply a smoothing filter to the mapping function to remove a step (eg, noise, color contour, etc.) generated during image conversion (see page 11, lines 11-15).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the combination by PARK to obtain the transform unit 130 applies a smoothing filter to the mapping function to remove noise (step) of an image generated by inverse tone mapping (iTM). Can be removed, and the dynamic range of the converted image can be increased, in order to provide a reduction unit configured to apply first noise reduction processing to the gain map. Therefore, combining the elements from prior arts according to known methods and technique would yield predictable results.
Regarding claim 7. The combination teaches the apparatus according to claim 1, wherein
the reduction unit controls an intensity of the first noise reduction processing based on at least one of a bit depth of the gain map (see Bonnier, Fig. 3B, paragraph 37, the gain map 123 can be defined based on a bit depth for each gain map value, e.g., at least 10 bits, and a gain map resolution, which can possibly include down sampling to reduce storage requirements for the gain map 123), a difference between a maximum value and a minimum value of luminance values of the second image, a shape of gamma applied to the second image, and a variance of pixel values in a flat area of the first image or the second image (see Bonnier, Fig. 1 and 4, paragraph 45, The computing device 102 can also extract the compressed gain map 404 from the compressed enhanced multi-channel image 406. decompress the extracted compressed gain map 404 to generate an uncompressed version of the gain map 410. The gain map 410 can be processed by a renormalization module 414, which accounts for minimum and maximum logarithmic (log2) values 418 when processing for different color channels; The scaled gain map values for the color channels can be applied to the multi-channel image base layer 408 (after passing through an applicable de-gamma function module 412) at a gain mapping module 422, which also uses an offset value 420 previously stored as metadata with the compressed gain map 404. The output of the gain mapping module 422 is further processed by a color management module 424 to produce the HDR multi-channel image that is optimized for a particular display. In some embodiments, metadata, such as the offset value 420 and the minimum and maximum log2 values 418 are stored with the gain map 410 (and compressed with the gain map 410) or stored alongside the compressed gain map 404. In some embodiments, the gain map 410 uses normalized values having a range of valid values from zero to one, and the re-normalized version of the gain map 410 includes a full range of gain map values as originally calculated when determining the original version of the gain map 410 (when comparing the original SDR and HDR images)).
However, the combination does not expressly teach a shooting sensitivity of the shot image.
The examiner is taking "Official Notice" that the limitation about a shooting sensitivity of the shot image is well known in the art.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was made to have modified the combination so that a shooting sensitivity of the shot image would be available.
11. The combination teaches a capturing apparatus, comprising:
the apparatus according to claim 1; and a shooting unit configured to generate the shot image (see claim 1 above).
Claim(s) 2 and 3 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kimura (PGPUB: 20200327649 A1) in view of Bonnier (WO 2024102337 A1), and further in view of PARK (WO 2017030311 A1), and further in view of Wang (PGPUB: 20190087657 A1).
Regarding claim 2. The combination teaches the apparatus according to claim 1, wherein
a resolution of the gain map is lower than a resolution of the second image (see Bonnier, paragraph 33, the resolution of a gain map can smaller than the resolution of the images that are compared to generate the gain map. For example, an approximation of every four pixels in a first image can be compared against an approximation of every four corresponding pixels in a second image in order to generate a gain map that is one quarter of the resolution of the first and second images).
However, the combination does not expressly teach the reduction unit controls an intensity of the first noise reduction processing based on a ratio of the resolution of the gain map to the resolution of the second image.
Wang teaches that the 3D imager 150 performs a fixed spatial calibration that generates a 3D spatially calibrated camera gain map (which may be implemented as a look-up table stored in memory) for each pixel (also referred to as a pixel-by-pixel gain map) of a 3D image captured by the 3D imager 150. The 3D spatially calibrated camera gain map describes a distribution of camera gains as a function of positions in 3D space within the capture volume 190. The 3D imager 150 uses the 3D spatially calibrated camera gain map to adjust illumination intensities such that a signal to noise ratio of the 3D image is increased (see Fig. 2, paragraph 24).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the combination by Wang to obtain The 3D imager 150 uses the 3D spatially calibrated camera gain map to adjust illumination intensities such that a signal to noise ratio of the 3D image is increased, in order to provide the reduction unit controls an intensity of the first noise reduction processing based on a ratio of the resolution of the gain map to the resolution of the second image. Therefore, combining the elements from prior arts according to known methods and technique would yield predictable results.
Regarding claim 3. The combination teaches the apparatus according to claim 2, wherein
the reduction unit performs control so that the higher the ratio, the higher the intensity of the first noise reduction processing (see Wang, Fig. 2, paragraph 24, the fixed spatial calibration is stored in a computer memory (e.g., electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (e-eprom)) for usage during a real-time 3D imaging performed by the 3D imager 150. Face and eye positions are found in the 3D image and the pixel-level gains are pulled from the 3D spatially calibrated gain map in eye regions of the face. For iris imaging performed by the iris imager 160, this pixel-by-pixel gain is converted to illumination intensities to increase the signal-to-noise ratio in the iris image).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 4-6 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to XIN JIA whose telephone number is (571)270-5536. The examiner can normally be reached 9:00 am-7:30pm.
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/XIN JIA/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2663
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