Patent ID: 8428350

Claim:
A color correction apparatus for images captured by a plurality of cameras ordered 1, 2, . . . , n, comprising: first means for storing a correction order defining a plurality of camera pairs and an order of the camera pairs, each camera pair defining a reference camera and a target camera; and second means for correcting a value of each pixel in a target image captured by the target camera based on a reference image captured by the reference camera and for replacing the target image by a corrected target image, for each camera pair in accordance with the order of the camera pairs, wherein each camera is treated as a target camera at least one time, when camera n is corrected, the correction continues reversely, and the reference camera in each camera pair is treated as the target camera in a previous camera pair except for a first camera pair of the correction order, the second means comprises: correspondence output means for determining pixel pairs, each pixel pair having a pixel in the target image, and a pixel in the reference image corresponding to the pixel in the target image; and color correction means for generating a lookup table indicating pixel values before-and-after color correction based on the pixel pairs, and for correcting pixels in the target image based on the lookup table, and the color correction means comprises: 2-dimensional Gaussian distribution generating means for generating a 2-dimensional Gaussian distribution for each pixel pair, the 2-dimensional Gaussian distribution having a mean equal to pixel values of the pixel pair, and a predetermined variance; total distribution generating means for generating a total distribution by accumulating the 2-dimensional Gaussian distribution or a product of the 2-dimensional Gaussian distribution and a weight over all pixel pairs, wherein the weight=(N−|P reference −P target |)/N, where P reference is a pixel value of the reference image pixel in the pair, P target is a pixel value of the target image pixel in the pair, and N is the possible maximum pixel value in an image; and lookup table generating means for generating the lookup table by setting a distribution value for each coordinate on an x-y plane based on the total distribution, and by selecting one coordinate for each x value, wherein an x value of the selected coordinate indicates a pixel value before correction, and a y value of the selected coordinate indicates a pixel value after correction.