Patent ID: 8565546

Claim:
An image processing device comprising: a storage unit for receiving image data, each image data comprising a pixel identifier and associated intensity data, a reduction unit configured to select working pixels around a given pixel on the basis of a reduction rule, a neighbourhood selection unit configured to select a neighbourhood of a given pixel on the basis of a neighbourhood rule, a weighting unit configured to calculate a weighting value between two neighbourhoods on the basis of distances between the intensity data in said two neighbourhoods and a pilot unit configured to call the reduction unit with pixels to be weighted and for each pixel to be weighted, and further configured to: call the neighbourhood selection unit with the pixel to be weighted to define a first neighbourhood and with the associated working pixels to define a plurality of second neighbourhoods, repeatedly call the weighting unit with the first neighbourhood and a second neighbourhood from the plurality of second neighbourhoods to obtain, each time, a weighting value for the second neighbourhood, multiply each weighting value of the second neighbourhood by the intensity data of the associated working pixel to define, each time, a piece of weighted intensity data of a working pixel, wherein the weighting unit is further configured to associate the values with a neighbourhood in a vector, and to define a distance d between a first vector u(Ni) and a second vector u(Ni) on the basis of a sum of quotients, wherein a numerator of the distance d depends on the square of the difference between values taken from respective columns of the first and second vectors, and a denominator of the distance d depends on a quantity which is inversely proportional to a value associated with the respective column of the second vector, and wherein the distance d raised to the square d(u(Ni)-u(Nj)) 2 between two vectors u(Ni) and u(Nj) is calculated on the basis of the relationship: d p ⁡ ( u ⁡ ( N i ) - u ⁡ ( N j ) ) 2 = ∑ p = 1 p = p ⁢ ( u ( p ) ⁡ ( N i ) - u ( p ) ⁡ ( N j ) ) 2 ( u ( p ) ⁡ ( N i ) - u ( p ) ⁡ ( N j ) ) 2 ⁢ ⁢ γ 2 , ( 51 ) where P is the number of columns of the vector u(N), u (p) (N) is the index column p of the vector u (N) and where γ is a non-zero coefficient.