Patent ID: 7561209

Claim:
An image enhancement unit for improving the quality of an image having a plurality of pixels, the image enhancement unit comprising: a contour enhancement unit configured to process luminance information from the image; and a color transient improvement unit configured to process chrominance information from the image, wherein the color transient improvement unit further comprises: a transient characterization unit configured to calculate one or more transient characterization values for a color transient detection window containing a current pixel; a transient threshold unit coupled to the transient characterization unit and configured to determine whether a color transient exists in the color transient detection window by comparing the transient characterization values to a chrominance color improvement threshold; a transient correction unit coupled to the transient threshold unit and configured to generate an improved U chrominance value and an improved V chrominance value for the current pixel; and a line averaging unit coupled to the transient characterization unit and configured to calculate an average U chrominance value and an average V chrominance value for each column of the color transient detection window to form a plurality of average U chrominance values and a plurality of average V chrominance values; and wherein the transient characterization unit is configured to calculate a first U transient characterization value corresponding to a degree that the plurality of average U chrominance values is monotonically increasing and to calculate a first V transient characterization value corresponding to a degree that the plurality of average V chrominance values is monotonically increasing.