Pulse or digital communications – Bandwidth reduction or expansion – Television or motion video signal
Reexamination Certificate
2000-05-08
2004-02-10
Philippe, Gims (Department: 2713)
Pulse or digital communications
Bandwidth reduction or expansion
Television or motion video signal
C382S238000, C348S402100, C348S420100
Reexamination Certificate
active
06690727
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND
This invention relates to image processing.
Image compression techniques such as MPEG (moving pictures experts group) use motion estimation in coding images. As shown in
FIG. 1
, motion estimation approximates the pixels in a current frame
10
of a video or graphics image based on the pixels in a previous frame
12
. Specifically, motion estimation using block matching algorithms can take advantage of the temporal redundancy between successive frames of video or graphics images. Block matching algorithms search a region of an image frame called a search window
18
to determine the movement of a portion of an image such as a leaf
13
that is within a current block of pixels
14
from one frame
12
to the next
10
. The search window
18
typically includes the pixels in the previous frame
12
that surround the location that corresponds to the location of the current block of pixels
14
in the current frame
10
because these surrounding pixels are more likely than other pixels in the previous frame
12
to include a matching block of pixels
15
for the current block of pixels
14
. A motion vector
16
represents the direction and amount of movement of the matching block of pixels
15
from the previous frame
12
and in that way implies the direction and amount of motion that will occur between the previous frame
12
and the current frame
10
. Here the motion vector
16
shows that the matching block of pixels
15
is in an area above and to the right of the location corresponding to the location of the current block of pixels
14
in the current image
10
, indicating that the leaf
13
is falling down and to the left. In this way, less storage space and bandwidth are used in transmitting a given pixel block because only the motion vector for the pixel block need be transmitted rather than the pixel block itself.
FIG. 2
shows that when the search windows
20
a-b
for different pixel blocks
22
a-b
overlap, block matching algorithms read some pixels more than once, such as the pixels in the shaded region.
REFERENCES:
patent: 5247355 (1993-09-01), Frederiksen
patent: 5901248 (1999-05-01), Fandrianto et al.
patent: 6441842 (2002-08-01), Fandrianto et al.
Fish & Richardson P.C.
Intel Corporation
Philippe Gims
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