Bit-depth extension with models of equivalent input visual noise

1. A method for extending bit-depth of display systems, comprising the steps of:

creating pseudo-random noise from human visual system noise, wherein the noise causes spatiotemporal dithering;

combining the pseudo-random noise with image data, thereby producing noise-compensated image data; and

quantizing the noise-compensated image data,

wherein multiple different dither frames having different dither frame patterns are tiled across individual image data frames in a repeating dither frame pattern sequence and the repeating dither frame pattern sequence is offset spatially by dither frame increments in different temporal image data frames.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

randomly tiling together the different dither frames to form a random dither frame pattern sequence;

applying the random dither frame pattern sequence to a first one of the image data frames;

spatially offsetting the random dither frame pattern sequence by a dither frame increment; and

applying the offset random dither frame pattern sequence to a next temporally different one of the image data frames.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the spatiotemporal noise generation is performed in a separable fashion across the spatial and temporal dimensions.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the spatiotemporal generation is performed as a single process.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the noise is stored as a three-dimensional array.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the noise is stored as a spatiotemporal noise in a gamma-corrected space.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the noise is stored in a two-dimensional array.

8. The method of claim 7 , wherein the noise includes repeating values in a frame.

9. The method of claim 1 , wherein creating pseudo-random noise further comprises:

creating the noise in dither frames having a smaller size than frames of the image data; and

tiling the dither frames on the frames of image data.

10. The method of claim 9 , wherein different dither frames are tiled across each frame of the image data in a repeating pattern with increments at start-of-row positions.

11. The method of claim 9 , wherein different dither frames are tiled across each frame of the image data in a repeating pattern with increments at end-of-frame positions.

12. The method of claim 9 , wherein dither start frames are placed randomly within each image frame and then stepped through in a repeating pattern such that temporal phases of neighboring tiles are out of sync.

13. The method of claim 1 , wherein temporal characteristics of a display are used to determine a number of dither frames.

14. The method of claim 1 , wherein temporal characteristics of a display are used with a visual model contrast sensitivity function to shape the spatiotemporal dithering.