Patent ID: 7884864
Filing Date: 2011-02-08
Classification: H04N

Abstract:
1. A noise reduction device reducing a noise superimposed on a video signal including plural kinds of color signals, each of which is output by a pixel, comprising: a first signal reading-out unit configured to read out a video signal of a target pixel for which a noise reduction is performed; a second signal reading-out unit configured to read out video signals of external peripheral pixels arranged around internal peripheral pixels in radial directions from the target pixel, the internal peripheral pixels being arranged adjacent to the target pixel, the external peripheral pixels outputting the same color signals as the video signal of the target pixel; a third signal reading-out unit configured to read out video signals of the internal peripheral pixels; a selection controller configured to judge presence of a correlation between the video signal of the target pixel and respective video signals of the external peripheral pixels, based on a relation between a signal value of the video signal of the target pixel and respective signal values of the video signals of the external peripheral pixels, and based on a relation between respective signal values of the video signals of the internal peripheral pixels; a signal calculator configured to calculate a signal value of a video signal of the target pixel by use of the signal values of the video signals of the external peripheral pixels; and a selector configured to select the signal value of the video signal of the target pixel calculated by the signal calculator, when the selection controller judges that number of video signals of the external peripheral pixels having correlations with the video signal of the target pixel is large, wherein, when the selection controller judges that the number of the video signals of the external peripheral pixels having correlations with the video signal of the target pixel is small, the selector selects the signal value of the video signal of the target pixel read out by the first signal reading-out unit.