Patent ID: 8264551

Claim:
A method for correcting distortions contained in a signal representing a taken image of a moving picture as distortions caused by a positional change, which occurs in at least one of a horizontal and a vertical direction of said taken image at a time to photograph said moving picture as a positional change of an image-taking device, said method comprising the steps of: correcting an inter-frame, which detects an inter-frame correction quantity for said positional change of said image-taking device in a frame period of said taken image and corrects said positional change by elimination of a displacement occurring between a frame and a next frame as a displacement of said taken image on the basis of said detected inter-frame correction quantity; and correcting an intra-frame, which computes an intra-frame correction quantity for said positional change of said image-taking device at each of a plurality of locations on one screen of said taken image and corrects a distortion caused by said positional change on said screen of said taken image as a distortion of said taken image on the basis of said computed intra-frame correction quantity, wherein said correcting said intra-frame comprises the steps of: (a) dividing one screen segment of said taken image into a plurality of image sub-segments, (b) detecting a rate of said positional change for each of said image sub-segments, wherein each sub-segment is arranged to include a plurality of pixels, and a first rate of a first sub-segment defined by a first hand-movement velocity vector is different than a second rate of a second sub-segment defined by a second hand-movement velocity vector, (c) integrating said detected rate including a horizontal-direction component and a vertical-direction component for each of said image sub-segments over the period of said image sub-segment in order to find a time-integration value to be used as said intra-frame correction quantity for a member subjected to a distortion correction process as a member of said taken image, (d) suspending said integrating of the vertical-direction component in response to a rate of progress of said integrating of the vertical-direction component being greater than a rate of progress of said integrating of the horizontal-direction component, and (e) correcting a distortion caused by said positional change on one screen of said taken image as a distortion in said taken image using said time-integration value to correct a distortion of said taken image.