Method for segmenting and estimating a moving object motion

Abstract

A method for use in an object-oriented analysis-synthesis coder, for segmenting an image of a current frame into moving objects and describing each motion of the moving objects with a set of motion parameters, which comprises the steps of: (a) comparing the current frame with a preceding frame to detect a motion vector field; (b) sliding window blocks on the motion vector field, and computing the degree of homogeneity for each of the window blocks to produce a seed block; (c) determining a set of initial values for the set of motion parameters based on the seed block; (d) evaluating whether each motion vector contained in and around the seed block is describable with the set of initial values or not, to thereby detect a revised region; (e) determining a set of revised values for the set of motion parameters from the revised region; (f) evaluating whether each motion vector contained in and around the revised region is describable with the set of revised values or not, to thereby detect a newly revised region; and (g) repeating the steps (e) and (f) until the difference between a current revised region and a previous revised region is less than a predetermined value, to thereby determine a set of final values for the set of motion parameters.