Patent ID: 7184609

Claim:
A method for performing real-time correction of a panoramic image, comprising: obtaining panoramic pixel coordinates from an a approximately 360 degree panoramic image; generating a warp table by applying a Spartially Varying Uniform (SVU) scaling function to the panoramic pixel coordinates wherein generating a warp table further comprises; specifying source curves; specifying a warping factor; and computing target curves using the source curves and the warping factor wherein the source curves further comprise a bottom source curve, wherein the bottom source curve is defined by the horizontal feature geometry, and a top source curve; vertically scaling the panoramic image pixel coordinates using the SVU scaling function to create vertically-scaled panoramic image pixel coordinates wherein vertically scaling comprises using a main scaling factor to scale the panoramic image pixel coordinates in the vertical direction and wherein the main scaling factor is computed using the source curves and target curves; horizontally scaling the vertically-scaled panoramic image pixel coordinates using the SVU scaling function to create a preliminary warp table containing preliminary pixel coordinates; and performing horizontal distortion correction on the preliminary warp table using the SVU scaling function to create the warp table; and warping the panoramic image using the warp table and the geometry of horizontal features in the panoramic image to create a corrected panoramic image.