Patent ID: 9536292
Date: 2017-01-03
CPC Classifications: G06T,H04N

Claim:
1. A method for adjusting an auto exposure target in an auto-exposure operation on a sequence of images, comprising: (a) prior to obtaining a histogram of an image, masking static or mostly static background saturated pixels in the image by identifying pixels in the image that have exceeded a saturation threshold a selected number of times over a time period, and applying a mask to the identified pixels such that the masked pixels are not included in the histogram; (b) obtaining the histogram of the image; (c) applying a weighted histogram table to the histogram to obtain weighted tonal value bins wherein at least some bins in the histogram containing oversaturated pixels are assigned a higher weighting value and at least some bins in the histogram containing non-saturated pixels are assigned a lower weighting value; and (d) summing the weighted histogram bins to obtain a saturation score and decreasing an auto exposure target for an auto exposure operation when the saturation score indicates that the image is oversaturated, and increasing the auto exposure target when the saturation score indicates that the image is non-saturated and when the image is underexposed.