Patent ID: 8319796
Filing Date: 2012-11-27
Classification: G06T

Abstract:
1. A computer-implemented method for combining a plurality of visual images that comprise views of a physical object to generate a resulting visual image of the physical object, the computer-implemented method comprising the steps of: receiving, at a computing device implementing the computer-implemented method, the plurality of images, each of the plurality of images comprising computer-readable data defining individual pixels of the each of the plurality of images; determining, by the computing device, which portions of pixels from different ones of the plurality of images overlap one another; aligning, by the computing device, the plurality of images with one another such that the portions of pixels from different ones of the plurality of images, which were determined to overlap one another, overlap one another; generating, at the computing device, computer-readable data representing a plurality of nodes, with each node in the plurality of nodes corresponding to a slice of pixels in one of the plurality of images; generating, at the computing device, computer-readable data representing edges between the plurality of nodes, each edge connecting two nodes whose corresponding slices of pixels can be neighboring slices in the resulting image based on the aligning; generating, at the computing device, computer-readable data representing a graph comprising the plurality of nodes and the generated edges such that each possible way of forming the resulting image is represented by paths from a starting node to an ending node, of the constructed graph, along the edges; computing, by the computing device, costs for at least some of the edges based on a similarity measurement of a combination of the slices of pixels corresponding to the two nodes connected by an edge with respect to content of the plurality of images; computing, by the computing device, costs for at least some of the plurality of nodes based on how similar a node's corresponding slice of pixels is to overlapping slices of pixels from other images, from the plurality of images; determining, by the computing device, a path from the starting node to the ending node in the graph having a smallest total cost, the path representing an ordering of slices of pixels from the plurality of images; and constructing, at the computing device, the resulting visual image of the physical object from the ordering of slices of pixels from the plurality of images in accordance with the determined path having the smallest total cost.