Patent ID: 7880814

Claim:
A visual processing device comprising: a spatial processing portion operable to perform a predetermined spatial processing on an inputted image signal using pixels surrounding a target pixel and output a processed signal; and an output signal creation portion operable to output, assuming the processed signal and the image signal as inputs, an output signal whose value monotonically decreases with respect to the value of the processed signal according to monotonically decreasing characteristics, in the case where the value of the image signal is fixed at a predetermined level, wherein the output signal creation portion includes: a visual processing portion operable to output a gain signal based on the processed signal and the image signal; a contrast enhancement portion operable to output an enhanced signal obtained by enhancing the contrast of the image signal, based on the image signal and a bandwidth-restricted signal obtained by restricting the spatial frequency bandwidth of the image signal; and a correction portion operable to correct the enhanced signal based on the gain signal and output the corrected signal as an output signal, wherein the bandwidth of the spatial frequency of the gain signal is narrower than the bandwidth of the spatial frequency of the image signal, and is broader than the bandwidth of the spatial frequency of the processed signal.