Safran Electronics & Defense

Sagem Defense Securite

Frédéric Jacquelin

Joël Budin

Youssef Benchekroun

A method for estimation of motion in a series of images captured by an image sensor comprising an estimation of motion vectors at a plurality of points from an image by an operation, done at each of the points from the plurality of points, of minimization of a functional of motion vectors comprising the sum of a data term and a regulation term, where the data term is made up of the product of a weighting term which is a function of the degree of regularity of the estimated motion vectors and a data linkage term which is a function of the spatial-temporal gradients of the brightness near points located in a neighborhood of a point, where the regulation term supplies a result to the minimization operation for the points near which the minimization of the data term does not allow estimating a unique solution.

Estimation of the movement of an image

The invention relates to a method which uses a series of images sensed by an image sensor including at least one preceding image and one following image to estimate movement. A first estimated movement is initially obtained by estimating the total movement from the preceding image to the following image. Next, an image compensated according to the first estimated movement is obtained from either one of the preceding and following images. Then, a second estimated movement is obtained by estimating dense movement between the compensated image and the other from the preceding and following images. Next, a residual value of global movement is determined. Finally, if the residual value is lower than a threshold value the second estimated movement is provided; otherwise, the preceding steps are repeated. The first estimated movement is determined by applying a binary image mask, and if during step /e/ the steps /a/ to /e/ are repeated, said steps are performed by applying a binary image mask updated according to the second estimated movement.

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Boulogne-Billancourt, France

Frédéric Jacquelin