Patent ID: 7006686

Claim:
An image processing method of de-mosaicing an image mosaic, the image mosaic including a plurality of image pixels and each image pixel having one of at least three colour values and having an intensity value representing the intensity of the colour value for that pixel in the image mosaic, the pixels of each colour value being interleaved in rows and columns across the image mosaic with pixels of different colour values and thereby form the image mosaic, the method comprising the steps of: i) generating from the image mosaic a high spatial frequency image that extends across all pixel locations of the image mosaic, each pixel having an intensity value; ii) reducing mosaic artifacts by adjusting the intensity values of pixels in the high spatial frequency image, said adjustment being performed on pixels generated from a particular colour value at least in a first row and/or a first column of the high frequency image according to the intensity values for said pixels and the intensity values of pixels generated from another colour value; iii) generating for each colour value from the image mosaic a low spatial frequency intensity image, each pixel having an intensity value; iv) after the adjustment of step ii), generating a demosaiced image for each of the colour values corresponding to said low frequency images by combining across all pixel locations the high frequency pixels with each of the low frequency intensity images; v) in step i), forming the high spatial frequency image by first generating, for each colour value, from the pixels for that colour value, a partial high spatial frequency image that extends only across pixel locations of the image mosaic for that colour value; vi) reducing mosaic artifacts by processing each of the partial high spatial frequency images according to step ii), and then using each of said processed partial high spatial frequency images in combination with each of the low frequency images to form a full colour demosaiced image.