Patent ID: 9264628
Filing Date: 2016-02-16
CPC Classification: H04N

Claim Text:
1. An imaging apparatus comprising: an image pickup element that has a different exposure timing according to a horizontal line of a pixel; and a flicker correction unit for correcting a flicker component using a correction gain, the flicker component being included in a video signal output from the image pickup element, wherein the flicker correction unit comprises: an integrating unit for performing line integration on a video signal in one horizontal line in one vertical synchronization period so as to calculate a line integrated value; a normalization unit for calculating a normalized line integrated value based on the line integrated value for a plurality of the vertical synchronization periods by normalizing the line integrated value; a Fourier transform processing unit for performing Discrete Fourier Transform on the normalized line integrated value for the plurality of vertical synchronization periods; a flicker component calculation unit for calculating information of a flicker component based on a processing result obtained by the Fourier transform processing unit; a correction gain calculation unit for calculating the correction gain based on the information of the flicker component in two or more horizontal lines; and an environment evaluation unit for evaluating whether or not a usage environment of the image pickup element is a flicker environment where flicker is generated, wherein when the environment evaluation unit evaluates that the usage environment of the image pickup element is not the flicker environment, the flicker correction unit outputs a video signal, in which the flicker component has not been corrected by the flicker correction unit, the environment evaluation unit calculates the information of the flicker component for the video signal that has been corrected by the flicker correction unit, and the environment evaluation unit evaluates whether or not the usage environment is the flicker environment by comparing the flicker component of the video signal, in which the flicker component has been corrected by the flicker correction unit, and the flicker component of the video signal, in which the flicker component has not been corrected by the flicker correction unit.