Patent ID: 8659617

Claim:
An apparatus for driving an image display apparatus, comprising: a display panel having a plurality of pixels, for displaying an image; a panel driver for driving the pixels of the display panel; an image data converter for detecting a smooth region, an edge region, and a detail region from externally input image data in units of at least one frame and generating converted image data by changing a gray scale or chrominance of the image data at different rates in the smooth region, the edge region and the detail region, wherein the image data converter comprises: a first characteristic-based region detection unit for detecting smooth region information, edge region information, and detail region information using a mean luminance deviation of adjacent pixels in the image data and outputting the detected smooth region information, edge region information, and detail region information, in units of at least one frame, a second characteristic-based region detection unit for detecting smooth region information, edge region information, and detail region information using a mean chrominance deviation of the adjacent pixels in the image data and outputting the detected smooth region information, edge region information, and detail region information, in units of at least one frame, and a third characteristic-based region detection unit for detecting the number of edge pixels by filtering the image data in units of at least one frame and outputting smooth region information, edge region information, and detail region information according to the counted number of edge pixels; a detected region summation unit for respectively summing the smooth region information, the edge region information, and the detail region information received from each of the first, second and third characteristic-based region detection units in units of at least one frame, arranging the summed smooth region information, the summed edge region information, and the summed detail region information in units of at least one frame, and outputting a smooth region data sum, an edge region data sum, and a detail region data sum on a frame basis; and a data processor for generating the converted image data by changing the gray level or chrominance of the input image data at different rates in the respective the smooth regions, edge regions and detail regions for the smooth region data sum, the edge region data sum, and the detail region data sum; and a timing controller for arranging the converted image data suitably for driving of the display panel, providing the arranged image data to the panel driver, and controlling the panel driver by generating a panel control signal, wherein the image data converter is programmed to generate the converted image data by changing the gray level or chrominance of the input image data at different rates in the respective the smooth regions, edge regions and detail regions.