Graphics hardware accelerated panorama builder for mobile phones

Modern mobile communication devices frequently contain built-in cameras allowing users to capture high-resolution still images, but at the same time the imaging applications are facing both usability and throughput bottlenecks. The difficulties in taking ad hoc pictures of printed paper documents with multi-megapixel cellular phone cameras on a common business use case, illustrate these problems for anyone. The result can be examined only after several seconds, and is often blurry, so a new picture is needed, although the view-finder image had looked good. The process can be a frustrating one with waits and the user not being able to predict the quality beforehand. The problems can be traced to the processor speed and camera resolution mismatch, and application interactivity demands. In this context we analyze building mosaic images of printed documents from frames selected from VGA resolution (6407times;480 pixel) video. High interactivity is achieved by providing real-time feedback on the quality, while simultaneously guiding the user actions. The graphics processing unit of the mobile device can be used to speed up the reconstruction computations. To demonstrate the viability of the concept, we present an interactive document scanning application implemented on a Nokia N95 mobile phone.