Patent Document ID: 8249152
Application ID: 12198061
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. An apparatus comprising: an image input unit configured to receive as input a video image having a first image frame and a second image frame, the second image frame being consecutive to the first image frame; and an image processing unit configured to segment the second image frame based at least in part on information on the first image frame, wherein the image processing unit comprises a foreground segmentation unit configured to segment the first image frame to determine a boundary between a foreground and a background of the first image frame, an attenuation vector generating unit configured to generate an attenuation vector from the segmented first image frame, and a contrast attenuating unit configured to attenuate a contrast of the second image frame by using the attenuation vector, and the attenuation vector generating unit is configured to generate the attenuation vector based on a difference between the contrast for a pixel in the second image frame and the contrast for a pixel of the boundary of the first image frame, the attenuation vector generating unit is configured to measure a difference between a contrast at a pixel of the second image frame and a contrast at a certain point of the boundary of the first image frame to generate a component of the attenuation vector, and the attenuation vector generating unit is configured to measure distances between the pixel of the second image frame and two different points of the boundary, and generates the component of the attenuation vector according to the distances and the inner product of components of the contrast at the pixel of the second image frame.