Researchers at the University of Toronto and MIT have developed a new image-processing technique that could prevent the blurriness resulting from photographs taken with a shaky hand.

Their method is based on a algorithm that computes the path taken by a shaky camera when the picture was shot, and then traces the path back to cancel the blurring... and make the picture better, as you can see on the picture here. Click on the picture to see more examples.

"It's the first time that the natural image statistics have been used successfully in deblurring images", says Rob Fergus from the MIT, the project leader who demonstrated the technology at the SIGGRAPH conference, last week. Each picture took 10 to 15 minutes to process using the technique. A technique which employs a universal statistical property that characterizes transitions from light to dark.

Blurry images have contrasting gradients, which Fergus' technique uses to estimate how the camera moved. The process then generates what is called a "blur kernel", which reveals where the camera was shooting when the image was taken.

There are several available products that aim to cancel the effects of photos taken with unsteady hands, but they only eliminate blurriness to a limited degree, while this work addresses more complex patterns of motion.


Source: CNet news.com, yesterday.

For those who do not know:
- LThe Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, is a private research university located in the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Its mission and culture are guided by an emphasis on teaching and research grounded in practical applications of science and technology.
- SIGGRAPH (short for Special Interest Group on Graphics and Interactive Techniques) is the name of the annual conference on computer graphics (CG) convened by the ACM SIGGRAPH organization. The first SIGGRAPH conference was in 1974. The conference is attended by tens of thousands of computer professionals, and has most recently been held in Boston. Past SIGGRAPH conferences have been held in Dallas, Seattle, Los Angeles, New Orleans, San Diego and elsewhere across the United States.