Technology Available for Licensing

Case 14193/14538/14562/14596

Multi-Frame Low-Light Signal-to-Noise Enhancement and Super Resolution

Keywords:

Fast, high resolution thermal imaging

Applications:

Thermal imaging, energy loss detection, night-time surveillance, night vision system, passive low-signal imaging system

Problem:

Thermal images typically appear grainy and ill-defined

Technology:

This invention proposes an image-processing algorithm that recovers information from extremely noisy, low-light video and creates a super-resolution image. The program combines a series of low-resolution images intelligently by identifying their positions inside high-resolution reference images. The resolution of digital images is enhanced by moving the camera (dither-type) and estimating the point-spread function (PSF) from the motion. The PSF is conventionally assumed to be Gaussian and is applied to the image to reduce noise, but the Gaussian estimate is very uncertain. This is a much more robust approach and does not require calibration of the imaging system.

Advantages:

• Recover information from extremely noisy, low-light video
• Created super resolution image

Inventors:

• Professor Sanjay Sarma (Department of Mechanical Engineering, MIT)
• Jonathan Jesneck (Department of Mechanical Engineering, MIT)
• Long N Phan (Department of Mechanical Engineering, MIT)

Intellectual Property:

US Patent Application 13/020596 filed on Feburary 3, 2011

Publications:

N/A

Please contact: Christopher R. Noble MIT Technology Licensing Officer 1 Cambridge Center, Kendall Square, NE18-501 Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142-1601

Email: crn@mit.edu Tel: 617-253-6966 Fax: 617–258-6790 Website: http://tlo.mit.edu