Patent ID: 7362911

Claim:
A method for subtracting fixed pattern noise in a digital imaging system incorporating a digital image sensor, comprising: acquiring a frame of pixel data; for each pixel in the frame, calculating a predicted pixel value based on the pixel data of a neighborhood of pixels surrounding the pixel and using one or more pixel value prediction algorithms; for each pixel in the frame, calculating a predicted noise value using the predicted pixel value and the pixel data for the pixel; calculating a confidence estimate for each predicted pixel value based on the nature of the image at the neighborhood of pixels surrounding the pixel; calculating a fixed pattern noise estimate for each pixel using the predicted noise value and the confidence estimate, wherein the confidence estimate determines the amount of predicted noise value to be incorporated into the fixed pattern noise estimate for the pixel; temporally filtering the fixed pattern noise estimate; and subtracting the temporally filtered fixed pattern noise estimate for each pixel from the frame of pixel data to generate a final image.