U.S. Philips Corporation

Sven Siggelkow

Achim Ibenthal

Rolf-Rainer Grigat

For time-sequential segment tracing, also of moving regions, a method of segmenting time-sequential images of a picture signal, in which, within an image, the image is split up into regions during its segmentation, and in which adjacent pixels having similar luminance and/or chrominance values are associated with a region is characterized in that it is attempted in time-sequential images to retrace regions of an image I.sub.n in a subsequent image I.sub.n+1 by performing a motion estimation of the regions of the image I.sub.n, in that the new position of the region in the image I.sub.n+1 is determined with reference to the motion vectors determined for each region by means of the motion estimation, in that subsequently the displaced regions are adapted to the image contents of the image I.sub.n+1, and in that pixels of the image I.sub.n+1 not covered by these adapted regions are added to one of these regions or to newly formed regions.

Growing community of inventors

Luneburg, Germany

Sven Siggelkow