The present invention relates generally to data processing. More particularly, the present invention relates to processing image data in mosaic form.
A variety of devices such as mobile phones are now equipped with image sensors such as charge-coupled-devices (CCD). These devices comprise an array of elements, each of which is filtered so as to sense only one color of light, typically red, green or blue. For each element the sensor provides a pixel value representing the intensity of the color of light detected by that element. These pixel values are referred to as “raw data” or “mosaic data.” Because images represented by mosaic data (referred to herein as “mosaic images”) are not pleasing to the eye, they are “demosaiced” (that is, converted into RGB images) before display. Each pixel in an RGB image is represented by three pixel values, each representing the intensity of one of the respective colors.
In conventional devices, demosaicing is performed before any further image processing, such as color processing, compression and decompression, and image enhancement. One disadvantage of this approach is that, because the volume of RGB data is three times that of mosaic data, more resources are consumed when processing RGB data.