The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
May. 29, 2001
Filed:
Apr. 14, 1998
Massimo Mancuso, Monza, IT;
Viviana D'Alto, Milan, IT;
Rinaldo Poluzzi, Milan, IT;
Luca Molinari, Piacenza, IT;
SGS-Thomson Microelectronics S.r.l., Agrate Brianza, IT;
Abstract
A method and a device for motion estimated and compensated Field Rate Up-conversion (FRU) for video applications is disclosed and claimed. The invention provides for dividing an image field to be interpolated into a plurality of image blocks, where each image block includes a respective set of image elements of the image field. In one embodiment, for each image block of a subset of image blocks, a group of neighboring image blocks is selected. A motion vector for the image block is estimated that describes the movement of the image block from a previous image field to a current image field on the basis of predictor motion vectors associated to the group of neighboring image blocks. Each image element of the image block is determined by interpolation of two corresponding image elements in the previous and current image fields related by the estimated motion vector. To estimate a motion vector, the invention provides for applying each of the predictor motion vectors to the image block to determine a respective pair of corresponding image blocks in the previous and current image fields. For each of the pairs of corresponding image blocks, an error function which is the Sum of luminance Absolute Difference (SAD) between corresponding image elements in the pair of corresponding image blocks is evaluated. For each pair of the predictor motion vectors, a degree of homogeneity is also evaluated, followed by the application of a fuzzy rule having an activation level that is proportional to the degree of homogeneity of the pair of predictor motion vectors and the error functions of the pair of predictor motion vectors. An optimum fuzzy rule having the highest activation level is selected, from which the best predictor motion vector is determined, having the smaller error function of the pair associated to the optimum fuzzy rule. In most cases, the motion vector for the image block is estimated on the basis of the best predictor motion vector.