IP Library Granted Patent US 12711569
Granted Patent B2
US 12711569 · App. 18/922,265 · Granted Aug 18, 2026

Method and device for latency reduction of an image processing pipeline

Inventors: Bertrand Nepveu (Montreal, CA); Marc-Andre Chenier (Saint-Hyacinthe, CA); Yan Cote (Notre-Dame-De-L'ile-Perrot, CA); Yves Millette (Santa Clara, CA)
Assignee: Apple Inc.
G06T1/20G06T5/73G06T5/90G06T7/73G06T15/005G06T15/20G06T19/006
View Patent ↗
Loading inventors, assignments & file history…
Monitor This Case
Get email alerts when status or documents change.
Order Certified Copies
Most orders are placed with the USPTO same day — all within 24 business hours.
Order via The Patent Place →
Pre-filled with this patent's details
Quick Facts
Patent No.
US 12711569
App. No.
18/922,265
Granted
Aug 18, 2026
Kind
B2
Abstract

In some implementations, a method includes: determining a complexity value for first image data associated with of a physical environment that corresponds to a first time period; determining an estimated composite setup time based on the complexity value for the first image data and virtual content for compositing with the first image data; in accordance with a determination that the estimated composite setup time exceeds the threshold time: forgoing rendering the virtual content from the perspective that corresponds to the camera pose of the device relative to the physical environment during the first time period; and compositing a previous render of the virtual content for a previous time period with the first image data to generate the graphical environment for the first time period.

Claims (43)

1 . A method comprising:

at a device including one or more processors, non-transitory memory, and an image capture device:

obtaining, via the image capture device, first image data corresponding to a physical environment;

rendering a first slice of virtual content associated with a graphical environment; and

compositing a first portion of second image data with the rendered first slice of virtual content to generate a first composited slice of the graphical environment.

2 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

generating, at an image processing architecture, the first portion of the second image data based on the first image data.

3 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

reading a first slice of the first image data into one or more input buffers of an image processing architecture.

4 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising initiating a display scan-out of the first composited slice.

5 . The method of claim 4 , wherein initiating the display scan-out of the first composited slice comprises triggering a row-wise or column-wise display scan-out while performing one or more image processing operation on one or more subsequent slices.

6 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising

writing the first composited slice into a display buffer for a rolling display, wherein the rolling display scans-out a second composited slice during the writing the first composited slice into the display buffer.

7 . The method of claim 6 , wherein the first composited slice is written to a dedicated segment of the display buffer corresponding to a spatial region of the rolling display.

8 . The method of claim 6 , wherein the display buffer comprises a front buffer and a back buffer, and wherein the first composited slice is written to the front buffer while a previous image frame is being scanned-out from the back buffer.

9 . The method of claim 1 , wherein:

a complexity analysis is performed based on a slice of the first image data to estimate a rendering time; and

a cached render for the slice is reused based on the rendering time.

10 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

performing one or more image processing operations on the first slice of the first image data to obtain the first portion of the second image data.

11 . The method of claim 10 , wherein the one or more image processing operations correspond to one of: white balance correction, de-mosaicking, color correction, gamma correction, or sharpening.

12 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the first slice of the first image data corresponds to a row or line of RAW image data.

13 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the first slice of the first image data corresponds to a predefined portion of RAW image data.

14 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the first image data corresponds to RAW image data, and wherein the first composited slice corresponds to an RGB image slice.

15 . The method of claim 1 , wherein rendering the first slice of virtual content associated with the graphical environment comprises:

rendering the first slice of virtual content based on a camera pose of the image capture device relative to the virtual content.

16 . The method of claim 1 , wherein a front-end architecture digitizes analog image data into the first image data.

17 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

determining a focal region based on contextual information; and

performing a pixel binning operation on the first image data based on the focal region to generate a quadtree version of the first image data.

18 . The method of claim 17 , wherein the contextual information includes at least one of head pose information, body pose information, limb pose information, or gaze direction information.

19 . A device comprising:

one or more processors;

a non-transitory memory;

an image capture device including an image sensor; and

one or more programs stored in the non-transitory memory, which, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the device to:

obtain, via the image capture device, first image data corresponding to a physical environment;

render a first slice of virtual content associated with a graphical environment; and

composite a first portion of second image data with the rendered first slice of virtual content to generate a first composited slice of the graphical environment.

20 . A non-transitory memory storing one or more programs, which, when executed by one or more processors of a device with an image capture device including an image sensor, cause the device to:

obtain, via the image capture device, first image data corresponding to a physical environment;

render a first slice of virtual content associated with a graphical environment; and

composite a first portion of second image data with the rendered first slice of virtual content to generate a first composited slice of the graphical environment.