Patent · US Expired

System for encoding image data into multiple layers representing regions of coherent motion and associated motion parameters

US5557684A · kind A · utility

249Cited by
1References
29Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateDec 27, 1994
Grant dateSep 17, 1996
Priority date
Expiry dateDec 27, 2014

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
  • CPC primaryH04N5/145
  • WIPO fieldAudio-visual technology
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

A system stores images as a series of layers by determining (i) the boundaries of regions of coherent motion over the entire image, or frame, sequence; and (ii) associated motion parameters, or coefficients of motion equations, that describe the transformations of the regions from frame to frame. The system first estimates motion locally, by determining the movements within small neighborhoods of pixels from one image frame i to the next image frame i+1, to develop an optical flow, or dense motion, model of the image. Next, the system estimates the motion using affine or other low order, smooth transformations within a set of regions which the system has previously identified as having coherent motion, i.e., identified by analyzing the motions in the frames i-1 and i. It groups, or clusters, similar motion models and iteratively produces an updated set of models for the image. The system then uses the local motion estimates to associate individual pixels in the image with the motion model that most closely resembles the pixel's movement, to update the regions of coherent motion. Using these updated regions, the system iteratively updates its motion models and, as appropriate, furth…

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.