Patent ID: 7349574

Claim:
A method of optimally utilizing a fixed set of intensity levels of a video display to represent a wide dynamic range data captured by an imager, comprising: (a) determining a target grey value; (b) determining a power curve from the determined target grey value; (c) limiting the determined power curve to a range of minimum and maximum power curves, the range of minimum and maximum power curves corresponding to an original compression curve utilized by the imager; (d) remapping a luma value of each pixel using the limited power curve; (e) determining a minimum luma value BP min for a frame of image data; (f) creating a histogram from the remapped luma values; (g) determining an ideal black point value BP and an ideal white point value WP from the created histogram and determined minimum luma value; and (h) restretching the image data, using the determined ideal black point value and an ideal white point value, to create new luma values for each pixel.