Patent ID: 7715653

Claim:
An image processing system comprising a plurality of image processing devices that facilitate navigating through content of images without fragmenting the content of the images into tiles or tile- sub components, and the system comprising: an image processing device for displaying an image; production and transformation components that transform an original source image into one or more successive smaller images without fragmenting their content, wherein the one or more successive smaller images are the replicas of the original source image, and the one or more successive smaller images correspond to one of the following: a) flat file representations containing the red, green and blue color gradients of each pixel b) digital images on standard formats like png, gif, tiff, c) jpeg baseline; zoom in, zoom out, pan and/or rotation through the content of the images, independently of their dimensions relative to those on the display area of the end user image processing devices; initialization component that sets up navigation parameters, wherein the navigation parameters include values that the system takes into account to determine the amount of magnification per step and how much content from the source image should be retrieved for each magnification; a retrieval component that accesses sections of said transformed images or source images and regulates the dimensions of a Cut-Region Image in order to fit the dimensions of the display areas of the end-user image processing devices, wherein by making the Cut-Region image larger than the display area, computing devices with enough data processing speed can magnify the Cut-Region image and use the content limits to produce zoom and pan visual effects locally, without requiring new sections for each navigation step. Furthermore, the retrieval component also regulates the dimensions of a Virtual Image, proportional to the transformed images or source images and having at least one side equal to the corresponding side on the Cut-Region Image, in order to produce the zoom visual effect by synchronizing the magnifications of the Cut-Region Image with the Virtual Image, and producing the pan visual effect by using the dimensions of the Cut-Region Image to determine if a new section from the transformed images or source images is required; a display component that displays the image sections as one complete image on the end user image processing devices.