Patent ID: 8160384

Claim:
A device adaptively reducing ringing artifacts in an input image including pixels of image information, comprising: a ringing-artifact detector for detecting areas of ringing artifacts in a pixel window based on a gradation level difference between pixels in the pixel window, the pixel window including a set of pixels from the input image pixels; an image processor for processing all pixels in the pixel window to generate processed pixels with reduced ringing artifacts; an adaptive combiner for selecting pixels with reduced ringing artifacts from the processed pixels, based on the detected ringing-artifact areas, and generates an output image comprising: (i) the selected processed pixels with reduced ringing artifacts, and (ii) the remaining pixels from the input image; a variance detector for determining local variance of each pixel in the pixel window with respect to neighboring pixels, wherein the local variances inducate presence of noisy areas in the image; and a signal detector for detecting based on the local variances when the location of the pixel window is proximate a noisy area in the input image, wherein the adaptive combiner is for selecting pixels with reduced ringing artifacts from the processed pixels, based on the detected ringing artifact areas and the detected pixel window location information, and for generating an enhanced output image comprising: (i) the selected processed pixels with reduced ringing artifacts, and (ii) the remaining pixels from the input image, whereby the output image includes portions of the input image pixels where ringing artifacts were not detected, and portions of the processed pixels corresponding to areas in the input image where ringing artifacts were detected, the output image being an enhanced version of the input image with ringing artifacts substantially reduced.