Patent ID: 7265766

Claim:
A method for compensating for inadequate bit resolution in a light processing system comprising: receiving a visual image signal comprising a plurality of values each indicative of an intensity level for a pixel to be displayed, each of the values represented by a plurality of bits of data; determining a quantization step size for the plurality of data, the quantization step size determination performed in a linear domain; for at least one particular pixel of the pixels: selecting a set of five consecutive horizontal pixels including the particular pixel in the middle of the set; determining a horizontal difference between the value associated with the particular pixel in the set and each value associated with the other pixels in the set; and determining whether all of the determined horizontal differences are less than or equal to the quantization step size and, if all the determined differences are less than or equal to the quantization step size, generating a filtered value according to the following formula: filtered value=[value( x− 2 ,y )+2*value( x− 1 ,y )+2*value( x,y )+2*value(x+1 ,y )+value ( x,y )]/8 where value (x,y)=the unfiltered value of a pixel having coordinating x,y; and the coordinates (x,y) are the coordinates of the particular pixel; and for the particular pixel: selecting a second set of five consecutive vertical pixels including the particular pixel; determining a vertical difference between the value associated with the particular pixel and the value associated with the other pixels in the second set; and determining whether all the determined differences are less than or equal to the quantization step size and, if all the determined differences are less than or equal to the quantization step size, generating a second filtered value for the particular pixel based on the following formula: second filtered value=[value( x,y− 2)+2*value( x,y− 1)+2*filtered value( x,y )+2*value( x,y+ 1)+value ( x,y+ 2)]/8.