US Patent 7689059 Image processing method and image processing circuit

A method and circuit for suppressing the generation of unnatural vertical streaks in output image data. A detection processing circuit generates a first noise correction value based on first and second noise detection signals from an OB region. A correction processing circuit performs an offset process on a first noise correction value to generate a second noise correction value and performs an FIR filter process on the second noise correction value to generate a noise correction signal NC. The correction processing circuit then corrects the effective image signal from the effective image region using the noise correction signal and performs a horizontal LPF process on the corrected effective image signal to generate output image data.