NEC developing “super-resolution” technologies for sharper image magnification

Do you watch crime shows a lot, like CSI for example? If you do, you’re probably familiar with how the crime lab technicians have this amazing ability to zoom in on photos and sharpen the images, thus revealing the face or license plate of their suspect. This technology isn’t entirely accurate but it appears that NEC is looking to turn that into a reality with the development of super-resolution technologies.

As you might imagine, when zooming in on a photo, it begins to get more pixelated which is what NEC is looking to solve. This will allow devices such as surveillance cameras to zoom in on objects in the distance while maintaining the finer details even when magnified more than 4 times. According to the press release:

“Key features of these technologies are as follows:

1. Creates images with fine details when highly magnified

These technologies create a library of images for subjects that are used to carry out super-resolution processing of images. In order to deal with subjects with different sizes, the library stores images with a variety of resolutions, and the best resolution images are automatically selected.

2. Small size image library data

A small size image library of data that can be deployed with a variety of equipment is created from a large set of image data. Redundant images are quickly eliminated from the library, which makes the library as small as possible without affecting image quality.”

This technology is being aimed at devices such as surveillance cameras that currently cover large areas such as airports and traffic intersections, although NEC has expressed interest in expanding this technology towards the enhancement of satellite and medical images.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Photo-Video
Tags: nec