Mobile Eyes: Camera Phone Based Vision Enhancement Tool for the Visually Impaired

描述(申请人提供)：随着婴儿潮一代年龄的增长和预期寿命的持续增加，美国的老年成年人人口正在进入快速增长期。严重影响他们独立生活和活动能力的一个问题是低视力，这种情况通常是由眼病引起的，导致视力达到20/70，甚至更糟，无法通过眼镜或手术纠正。鉴于老年人医疗保健的重要性和高昂的成本，为低视力者提供视力增强的技术的应用尤其有价值。 在这份SBIR中，我们建议演示MobileEyes的技术可行性，MobileEyes是一种基于软件的附加套件，它使用现有的支持相机的PDA或手机硬件为老年人或视障人士提供增强的电子成像功能。该系统将提供基于视频的放大和对比度增强，并对文本进行专门的增强，包括透视校正、稳定、去模糊、分辨率增强和对比度增强。该系统将可配置为考虑到特定用户的特定需求。技术贡献将集中在文本增强上，因为不能阅读直接影响日常活动，如购物、准备食物、服药，甚至使用家用电器。增强的文本显示在设备上，低视力用户可以很容易地阅读。 现有的视力增强设备，如放大镜、望远镜或电子视频分辨率增强产品，通常是特定于任务的，需要特殊的硬件，并且可能不容易适应用户的特定视觉需求。我们基于软件的MobileEyes解决方案利用了现有的设备，这些设备通常是可用的，而且用户可能无论如何都会携带。拥有基于软件的解决方案还有两个额外的优势。首先，它提供了具有多种增强功能的集成服务，未来可以通过光学字符识别(OCR)或文本到语音等更高级的选项进行扩展。其次，它可以直接与同一设备上的其他应用程序集成，以获得专门的解决方案。例如，我们的条形码阅读器可以与设备的通信链路集成，以提供药物监测和提醒服务。当今移动设备处理器、内存和电池寿命的提高，以及成像能力的提高，使我们能够将这些功能集成到设备中，而不是设计支持特定功能的设备。 在第一阶段，我们将用原型演示该方法的技术可行性，确定第二阶段的关键研究和开发任务，并为商业化做好准备。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The population of aging adults in the United States is entering a period of rapid growth as baby boomers get older and life expectancy continues to increase. One problem that is significantly affecting their ability to live and function independently is low vision, a condition typically caused by eye disease that results in 20/70 vision or worse that can not be corrected with glasses or surgery. Given the importance and high cost of healthcare for elderly adults, applications of technology that provide visual enhancement for low-vision persons are especially valuable. In this SBIR we propose to demonstrate the technical feasibility of MobileEyes, a software based add-on suite which uses existing camera enabled PDA or cell phone hardware to provide enhanced electronic imaging capabilities for the elderly or the visually impaired. The system will provide video based magnification and contrast enhancement, with specialize enhancement for text including perspective correction, stabilization, deblurring, resolution enhancement and contrast enhancement. The system will be configurable to account for the specific needs of the given user. The technical contributions will focus on text enhancement since an inability to read directly impacts daily activities such as shopping, preparing meals, taking medication, or even using household appliances. The enhanced text is displayed on the device and will be easily read by low vision users. Existing vision enhancement devices, such as magnifying glasses, telescopes, or electronic video resolution enhancement products typically task specific, require special hardware and may not be easily adapted to specific visual needs of the user. Our software based MobileEyes solution makes use of existing devices which are commonly available, and that users would likely carry anyway. Having a software based solution has two additional advantages. First, it provides an integrated service with multiple enhancement capabilities that can be extended in the future with more advance options such as optical character recognition (OCR) or text to speech. Second, it can be integrated directly with other applications on the same device for specialized solutions. For example, our barcode reader could be integrated with the device's communications links to provide a drug monitoring and reminder service. The improved processor, memory and battery life, and improving imaging capabilities of today's mobile devices allows us to integrate the capabilities into the device, rather than designing a device to support the specific capabilities. In Phase I we will demonstrate the technical feasibility of the approach with a prototype, identify key research and development tasks for Phase II and align ourselves for commercialization.