Patent ID: 7773158

Claim:
A visual processing device comprising: a spatial processing portion operable to perform a predetermined spatial processing on an inputted image signal using pixels surrounding a target pixel and output a processed signal; and an output signal creation portion operable to output, when the processed signal and the image signal are taken as inputs, an output signal whose value monotonically decreases with respect to the value of the processed signal according to monotonically decreasing characteristics, in the case where the value of the image signal is fixed at a predetermined level, wherein the output signal creation portion includes: a visual processing portion operable to output a gain signal determined based on the processed signal and the image signal; and a correction portion operable to correct the image signal based on the gain signal and output the corrected signal as an output signal, and wherein the visual processing portion performs visual processing that prevents saturation of the output signal while enhancing the contrast in a local region by outputting the gain signal whose value monotonically decreases with respect to the value of the processed signal according to monotonically decreasing characteristics in the case where the value of the image signal is fixed at a predetermined level, and the gain signal whose value approaches 1 as the image signal approaches a maximum value.