Originally Posted by NECEL

NEC Electronics Announces New Technology to Boost Low Resolution in Images and Video

KAWASAKI, Japan, May 14, 2008

NEC Electronics Corporation (TSE:6723) today announced that it has developed a technology for improving the display of low-resolution images and movies on large screen panels. Working with NEC Corporation, NEC Electronics has achieved a new technology for greatly reducing the blurring and graininess that occurs when low-resolution media is magnified for large-screen display.

The new technology is a single frame super-resolution technology which analyzes and processes the information contained in one frame of data to improve blurring and graininess. It is based on an algorithm which refines the contours of people and objects in image magnification process, and compensates for the quality and enhances the color rendition for crisp images.

Additionally, the technology boosts image data in VGA format (720 × 480 pixels) ordinarily used for TV broadcasts and DVD storage to six times the resolution, providing clear images for HDTV (1920 × 1080 pixels).

There does exist a technology for improving the quality of still images and movies to create a clear image. With this technique, high-frequency component is restored by analyzing multiple observations of the target captured in successive frames. This technique requires a dramatic increase in analysis data, however. It also entails increased component costs for the larger external memory required, and real-time processing is difficult, making it unsuited for consumer electronics applications.
With the aim of developing a technology to improve image quality that can easily be incorporated into a system quickly and without high costs, NEC Electronics has therefore developed an algorithm to reproduce clear images with one frame analysis, decreasing the data required, and is planning the start of supplying the algorithm in an IP core loaded on ASICs.