Sensor prevents shut-eye in digital snaps

Sensor prevents shut-eye in digital snaps
17:59 25 May 2005
NewScientist.com news service
Will Knight

Digital images featuring someone in mid-blink could be banished forever using an image-analysis system for cameras developed in Japan.

Masahide Kaneko and colleagues at the University of Electro-Communications, on the outskirts of Tokyo, Japan, developed the system, which can even eliminate blinking from group photographs, they say.

Digital cameras can cause people to inadvertently blink at the vital moment by emitting several pre-photo flashes. These are meant to prevent red eye by making the subject´s irises contract, but they can also dazzle the target and make them to shut their eyes when the picture is captured.

The system developed by Kaneko´s team gets around the problem by snapping 15 frames in 0.5 seconds after the shutter button is clicked. A computer then rapidly analyses these image, discarding those in which the subject is blinking, leaving photographer with a better final snap.

Least blinkers
The Japanese researchers say the system can even detect closed eyes within photos of up to 30 people and can automatically pick out an image featuring the least blinkers. They hope to sell the idea to camera manufacturers and believe a commercial version could be ready within two years.

"It could be very useful for taking portraits or wedding photos," says Andrea Thompson, deputy editor of UK magazine Digital Camera. "It sounds like the sort of feature that would appear on a top-of-the-range compact camera. There are so many of those that companies are desperate to distinguish them."

Thompson says it would be a logical step, given that high-end digital cameras already come with on-board image-processing software and fairly powerful microprocessors.