Low-Flicker Display for EPD Video Based on Interframe Matching

Electrophoretic display (EPD) technology has achieved a paper-like display effect, which meets the physiological characteristics of the human eye, with the advantages of its bistable characteristics and reflective display. However, the traditional EPD driving method has an obvious flickering problem and long driving time, which limits its application in the field of video display. To enhance the video display capability of EPDs, some researchers have improved the fluency and display quality of EPD video display by compressing the driving time and combining it with the halftone algorithm. However, some halftone algorithms are sensitive to the differences between adjacent frames, and even if the video frames are almost the same, their pixel distributions will still be significantly different, which will lead to unnecessary interframe flicker in EPDs during frame updating. To address this problem, this article proposed a halftone optimization algorithm based on interframe matching, which reduced visual flicker by improving the pixel distribution similarity of the halftone results of adjacent frames in a video. The algorithm was combined with an edge detection strategy to provide targeted protection of image edges and avoid possible artifacts in the optimization process. The algorithm was applicable to a variety of halftone algorithms and could effectively reduce the interframe flicker phenomenon of EPD when applying halftone algorithms for video display. Taking the error diffusion algorithm as an example, after optimization using the algorithm, the proportion of same pixels in adjacent frames was increased by 39.22%, and the modulation depth of EPDs was reduced by 14.36%. In addition, the algorithm could better maintain the original halftone image characteristics and quality during the optimization process, and the local update mode can also effectively reduce the refreshing power consumption of the EPD.