Patent ID: 7034878
Filing Date: 2006-04-25
Classification: H04N

Abstract:
1. A camera apparatus, comprising: a camera unit configured to acquire an image; a line-of-sight detection unit configured to detect a point of eye fixation of a user within a camera screen; an importance computation unit configured to determine levels of importance for respective areas of the image acquired by said camera unit in accordance with the detection by said line-of-sight detection unit; and a number-of-gray-scale-level determining unit configured to allocate area-dependent numbers of gray scale levels to the respective areas of the image in response to the determination by the importance computation unit, thereby reducing a processing time required for processing less important areas of the image to reduce a total processing time required for processing an entirety of the image prior to storage of the image in memory, wherein said number-of gray-scale-level determining unit increases the number of gray scale levels in a first area compared with a second area that has a smaller level of importance than the first area.