Bayesian motion estimation for temporally recursive noise reduction in X-ray fluoroscopy

This paper develops a Bayesian motion estimation algorithm for motion-compensated temporally recursive filtering of moving low-dose X-ray images (X-ray fluoroscopy). These images often exhibit a very low signal-to-noise ratio. The described motion estimation algorithm is made robust against noise by spatial and temporal regularization. A priori expectations about the spatial and temporal smoothness of the motion vector field are expressed by a generalized Gauss-Markov random field. The advantage of using a generalized Gauss-Markov random field is that, apart from smoothness, it also captures motion edges without requiring an edge detection threshold. The costs of edges are controlled by a single parameter, by means of which the influence of the regularization can be tuned from a median-filter-like behaviour to a linear-filter-like one.     

自适应联合相邻运动矢量的运动补偿插值算法

帧率上采样作为一种视频后处理技术,通过对原始视频插值得到高帧率视频,满足人们对高帧率视频的需求.传统基于重叠块的插值补偿算法会带来块效应或鬼影现象.为了解决这一问题,人们提出联合匹配块及其相邻块预测的方法,但是复杂度高,效果不明显.基于以上几点,本文提出一种自适应联合相邻运动矢量的运动补偿插值算法(Joint Motion-Compensated In-terpolation Algorithm Using Adjacent Block Motion Vectors Adaptively,AJ-MCI).在该算法中,将运动矢量矫正和运动补偿插值算法相结合,同时运动补偿模块中自适应地联合相邻匹配块,以最大限度刻画真实运动轨迹.实验结果表明,本文算法能很好的提升视频的主客观质量,同时保持较低计算复杂度.     

复杂背景下运动目标检测方法

利用相邻两帧图像的运动信息更新特征块提取阈值，实时地提取出当前帧图像中最能体现背景运动特征的特征块。采用块匹配的运动估计方法获取了各块的运动矢量，再依据所有特征块运动矢量的统计特性提取出背景运动矢量来配准差分，实现了目标的检测。实验结果表明，此方法能有效地检测复杂背景下的运动目标。     

A new distortion measure for motion estimation in motion-compensated hybrid video coding

In the video coding standards MPEG-x and H.26x, a motion-compensated prediction technique is used for enhancing the coding performance of bitrate reduction or peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) improvement. This technique takes advantage of the correlation between consecutive frames in the time domain, which is relatively higher than that between adjacent blocks in the spatial domain. In order to utilize the correlation between consecutive frames, the conventional video coding standards have used the motion estimation (ME) and compensation technique, where the Sum of the Absolute Differences (SAD) is usually used as the distortion measure. The ME estimates the reference block that could minimize the residual signal between the current and reference blocks. However, the SAD is not appropriate to the specific sequences that have global or local illumination changes. In addition, the high-resolution video sequences have higher spatial correlation than the low-resolution video sequences in general. Therefore, a new distortion measure that can consider spatial and temporal correlation simultaneously may be helpful to enhance the coding performance. The proposed distortion measure searches for a reference block that minimizes the motion-compensated residual signal when the DC-component is predicted. In our proposed algorithm, the maximum BD-rate improvement is up to 13.6% for illumination-changed video sequences, and the average BD-rate improvement is 6.6% for various high-resolution video sequences in the baseline profile.     

An optimal quadtree-based motion estimation and motion-compensatedinterpolation scheme for video compression

We propose an optimal quadtree (QT)-based motion estimator for video compression. It is optimal in the sense that for a given bit budget for encoding the displacement vector field (DVF) and the QT segmentation, the scheme finds a DVF and a QT segmentation which minimizes the energy of the resulting displaced frame difference (DFD). We find the optimal QT decomposition and the optimal DVF jointly using the Lagrangian multiplier method and a multilevel dynamic program. We introduce a new, very fast convex search for the optimal Lagrangian multiplier lambda*, which results in a very fast convergence of the Lagrangian multiplier method. The resulting DVF is spatially inhomogeneous, since large blocks are used in areas with simple motion and small blocks in areas with complex motion. We also propose a novel motion-compensated interpolation scheme which uses the same mathematical tools developed for the QT-based motion estimator. One of the advantages of this scheme is the globally optimal control of the tradeoff between the interpolation error energy and the DVF smoothness. Another advantage is that no interpolation of the DVF is required since we directly estimate the DVF and the QT-segmentation for the frame which needs to be interpolated. We present results with the proposed QT-based motion estimator which show that for the same DFD energy the proposed estimator uses about 25% fewer bits than the commonly used block matching algorithm. We also experimentally compare the interpolated frames using the proposed motion compensated interpolation scheme with the reconstructed original frames.     

基于稠密矢量场及自适应补偿的帧率上变换

为了有效解决视频帧率上变换中物体边缘出现的模糊和块效应等问题,结合运动估计,优化了矢量化后处理和运动补偿算法.在基于块的运动估计中,结合运动的时空相关性优化块匹配算法,提高物体边缘运动矢量的准确性;通过基于像素块相关性的插值算法,获取像素矢量场,并保持物体结构完整性;在运动补偿时,结合矢量后处理的分类信息,自适应地进行加权插值计算,提高内插帧的质量.实验结果表明,与传统方法相比,该方法在主观和客观质量上都有较大的提升.     

Generalised block-matching motion estimation using quad-treestructured spatial decomposition

A generalised block-matching motion estimation with variable-size blocks is proposed. The location and size of each block are determined from a quad-tree spatial decomposition algorithm. Experimental results with head-and-shoulders test image sequences show that motion-compensated errors with this method have lower entropy than the conventional fixed or variable-size block-matching techniques. The quality of the coded pictures under the proposed method with an H.261 codec, both subjectively and in terms of PSNR, outperforms the conventional use of fixed and variable block-size motion estimators     

数字稳像中的快速和鲁棒运动估计研究

 提出了一种用于数字图像稳定的快速和鲁棒运动估计方法.在图像的运动估计中,首先采用一种预判局部宏块的算法：在计算运动矢量前对宏块的梯度信息进行分析以避免误匹配,通过减少参与计算的宏块数目提高处理速度;其次,提出快速估计宏块运动矢量的方法,用改进的序贯相似性算法(SSDA)进行块匹配,以提高运动矢量的计算速度;然后采用LMedS估计法去除不精确的宏块运动向量,用最小二乘法求解出最优的模型参数.实验结果表明了该方法的精确性、快速性和鲁棒性.     

基于主动网格的运动补偿

提出了基于图像内容特征的主动网格生成方法和网格节点运动估计方法，网格的边界与运动场景的边界有很好的一致性，避免了相同三角形小片内存在不同的运动物体，克服这种情况下运动估计失效的问题。块匹配的运动补偿方法的缺陷在于块效应，基于主动网格的运动补偿消除了块效应和边界不连续现象，运动场的估计与实际运动场有很好的近似，对局部运动也有更好的逼近。     

Improved motion estimation time using a combination of dynamic reference frame selection and residue-based mode decision

Motion estimation using multiple reference frames is widely used as the basis for recent video coding standards (eg. H.264/AVC) to achieve increased coding efficiency. However, this increases the complexity of the encoding process. In this paper, a new technique for efficient motion estimation is proposed. A combination of multiple reference frame selection and image residue-based mode selection is used to improve motion estimation time. By dynamic selection of an initial reference frame in advance, the number of reference frames to be considered is reduced. In addition, from examination of the residue between the current block and reconstructed blocks in preceding frames, variable block size mode decisions are made. Modified initial motion vector estimation and early stop condition detection are also adopted to speed up the motion estimation procedure. Experimental results compare the performance of the proposed algorithm with a state of the art motion estimation algorithm and demonstrate significantly reduced motion estimation time while maintaining PSNR performance.     

Fuzzy Logic Based Temporal Error Concealment for H.264 Video

In this paper, a new error concealment algorithm is proposed for the H.264 standard. The algorithm consists of two processes. The first process uses a fuzzy logic method to select the size type of lost blocks. The motion vector of a lost block is calculated from the current frame, if the motion vectors of the neighboring blocks surrounding the lost block are discontinuous. Otherwise, the size type of the lost block can be determined from the preceding frame. The second process is an error concealment algorithm via a proposed adapted multiple‐reference‐frames selection for finding the lost motion vector. The adapted multiple‐reference‐frames selection is based on the motion estimation analysis of H.264 coding so that the number of searched frames can be reduced. Therefore the most accurate mode of the lost block can be determined with much less computation time in the selection of the lost motion vector. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm achieves from 0.5 to 4.52 dB improvement when compared to the method in VM 9.0.     

VLSI Architecture of Block Matching Algorithms for Motion Estimation in High Efficiency Video Coding

High-efficiency video coding (HEVC) is a latest video coding standard and the motion estimation unit is the most important block. The work presents the different types of Matching Criteria for Block-Based Motion Estimation technique in HEVC standard. HEVC requires fast motion estimation algorithms to have better real time performance. The hardware implementation of motion estimation helps to achieve high speed though parallel processing. An improved block matching technique is designed with reduced blocks for HEVC. The proposed method has less execution time where only blocks having motion are compared for prediction computation. The searching time complexity is dependent on the number of blocks that are having motion. The searching time of frame having small motion can be reduced to 80–85% as compared to the traditional full search algorithm. In the paper, sum of absolute difference, mean square error and mean absolute difference are computed to find the best matching algorithm for HEVC. However, SAD has less computational complexity with compare to other matching criteria. The results suggest that proposed motion estimation algorithm has better performance with compare to similar previous work.

     

Temporal image sequence prediction using motion field interpolation

A new method for motion-compensated temporal prediction of image sequences is proposed. Motion vector fields in natural scenes should possess two basic properties. First, the field should be smoothly varying within moving objects to compensate for nonrigid or rotational motion, and scaling of objects. Second, the field should be discontinuous along the boundaries of the objects. In the proposed method the motion vector field is modelled using finite element methods and interpolated using adaptive interpolators to satisfy the above-stated requirements. This is particularly important when only very sparse estimates of motion vector fields are available in the decoder due to bit-rate constraints limiting the amount of overhead information that can be transmitted. The proposed prediction method can be applied for low-bit-rate video coding in conventional codecs based on motion-compensated prediction and transform coding, as well as in model-based codecs. The performance of the proposed method is compared with standard motion-compensated prediction based on block matching. It is shown that for simple video telephony scenes a reduction of more than 30% in the energy of the prediction error can be achieved with an unchanged number of transmitted motion vectors and with only a modest increase in computational complexity. When implemented in an H.261 codec the new prediction method can improve the peak SNR 1–2 dB producing a significant visual improvement.     

A multistage motion vector processing method for motion-compensated frame interpolation.

In this paper, a novel, low-complexity motion vector processing algorithm at the decoder is proposed for motion-compensated frame interpolation or frame rate up-conversion. We address the problems of having broken edges and deformed structures in an interpolated frame by hierarchically refining motion vectors on different block sizes. Our method explicitly considers the reliability of each received motion vector and has the capability of preserving the structure information. This is achieved by analyzing the distribution of residual energies and effectively merging blocks that have unreliable motion vectors. The motion vector reliability information is also used as a prior knowledge in motion vector refinement using a constrained vector median filter to avoid choosing identical unreliable one. We also propose using chrominance information in our method. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme has better visual quality and is also robust, even in video sequences with complex scenes and fast motion.     

Motion estimation techniques for digital TV: a review and a newcontribution

The key to high performance in image sequence coding lies in an efficient reduction of the temporal redundancies. For this purpose, motion estimation and compensation techniques have been successfully applied. This paper studies motion estimation algorithms in the context of first generation coding techniques commonly used in digital TV. In this framework, estimating the motion in the scene is not an intrinsic goal. Motion estimation should indeed provide good temporal prediction and simultaneously require low overhead information. More specifically the aim is to minimize globally the bandwidth corresponding to both the prediction error information and the motion parameters. This paper first clarifies the notion of motion, reviews classical motion estimation techniques, and outlines new perspectives. Block matching techniques are shown to be the most appropriate in the framework of first generation coding. To overcome the drawbacks characteristic of most block matching techniques, this paper proposes a new locally adaptive multigrid block matching motion estimation technique. This algorithm has been designed taking into account the above aims. It leads to a robust motion field estimation precise prediction along moving edges and a decreased amount of side information in uniform areas. Furthermore, the algorithm controls the accuracy of the motion estimation procedure in order to optimally balance the amount of information corresponding to the prediction error and to the motion parameters. Experimental results show that the technique results in greatly enhanced visual quality and significant saving in terms of bit rate when compared to classical block matching techniques     

Rate-Distortion Optimized Motion-Compensated Prediction for Packet Loss Resilient Video Coding

A rate-distortion optimized motion-compensated prediction method for robust video coding is proposed. Contrasting methods from the conventional literature, the proposed approach uses the expected reconstructed distortion after transmission, instead of the displaced frame difference in motion estimation. Initially, the end-to-end reconstructed distortion is estimated through a recursive per-pixel estimation algorithm. Then the total bit rate for motion-compensated encoding is predicted using a suitable rate distortion model. The results are fed into the Lagrangian optimization at the encoder to perform motion estimation. Here, the encoder automatically finds an optimized motion compensated prediction by estimating the best tradeoff between coding efficiency and end-to-end distortion. Finally, rate-distortion optimization is applied again to estimate the macroblock mode. This process uses previously selected optimized motion vectors and their corresponding reference frames. It also considers intraprediction. Extensive computer simulations in lossy channel environments were conducted to assess the performance of the proposed method. Selected results for both single and multiple reference frames settings are described. A comparative evaluation using other conventional techniques from the literature was also conducted. Furthermore, the effects of mismatches between the actual channel packet loss rate and the one assumed at the encoder side have been evaluated and reported in this paper     

Motion estimation methods for overlapped block motion compensation

An extension of conventional block motion compensation (BMC), overlapped block motion compensation (OBMC) has been shown to reduce residual errors and blocking effects in motion-compensated video. However, the overlap creates a noncausal spatial dependence between blocks and complicates motion estimation (ME) for OBMC. Iterative methods have traditionally been employed for overlapped block motion estimation (OBME). For compression, the rate for the motion vector field (MVF) may also be constrained. This work considers several rate-constrained OBME algorithms, both iterative and noniterative. Experiments demonstrate that a simple raster-scan algorithm is effective as a suboptimal, noniterative solution, with comparable or better rate-distortion performance and computational complexity than iterative OBME algorithms. Depending on the application, either this method or a simple block-matching algorithm plus iteration are the most attractive of the tested OBME schemes.     

分块投影匹配的运动目标检测方法

针对动态场景下图像序列中运动目标检测问题,首先采用基于分块投影匹配的全局运动参数估计方法,然后利用估计得到的运动参数补偿背景的全局运动以稳定图像序列,最后在稳定后的图像序列上采用背景减除法提取运动目标。实验表明,分块投影匹配的运动目标检测能有效地提取动态背景下的运动目标。     

Video Block Motion Estimation Based on Gray-Code Kernels

Motion in modern video coders is estimated using a block matching algorithm that calculates the distance and direction of motion on a block-by-block basis. In this paper, a novel fast block-based motion estimation algorithm is proposed. This algorithm uses an efficient projection framework that bounds the distance between a template block and candidate blocks. Fast projection is performed using a family of highly efficient filter kernels-the gray-code kernels-requiring only 2 operations per pixel per kernel. The projection framework is combined with a rejection scheme which allows rapid rejection of candidate blocks that are distant from the template block. The tradeoff between computational complexity and quality of results can be easily controlled in the proposed algorithm; thus, it enables adaptivity to image content to further improve the results. Experiments show that the proposed adaptive algorithm outperforms other popular fast motion estimation algorithms.