# Motion estimation

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Motion estimation is the process of determining motion vectors that describe the transformation from one 2D image to another; usually from adjacent frames in a video sequence. It is an ill-posed problem as the motion is in three dimensions but the images are a projection of the 3D scene onto a 2D plane. The motion vectors may relate to the whole image (global motion estimation) or specific parts, such as rectangular blocks, arbitrary shaped patches or even per pixel. The motion vectors may be represented by a translational model or many other models that can approximate the motion of a real video camera, such as rotation and translation in all three dimensions and zoom.

## Contents

More often than not, the term motion estimation and the term optical flow are used interchangeably.[ citation needed ] It is also related in concept to image registration and stereo correspondence. [1] In fact all of these terms refer to the process of finding corresponding points between two images or video frames. The points that correspond to each other in two views (images or frames) of a real scene or object are "usually" the same point in that scene or on that object. Before we do motion estimation, we must define our measurement of correspondence, i.e., the matching metric, which is a measurement of how similar two image points are. There is no right or wrong here; the choice of matching metric is usually related to what the final estimated motion is used for as well as the optimisation strategy in the estimation process.

## Algorithms

The methods for finding motion vectors can be categorised into pixel based methods ("direct") and feature based methods ("indirect"). A famous debate resulted in two papers from the opposing factions being produced to try to establish a conclusion. [2] [3]

### Indirect methods

Indirect methods use features, such as corner detection, and match corresponding features between frames, usually with a statistical function applied over a local or global area. The purpose of the statistical function is to remove matches that do not correspond to the actual motion.

Statistical functions that have been successfully used include RANSAC.

### Additional note on the categorization

It can be argued that almost all methods require some kind of definition of the matching criteria. The difference is only whether you summarise over a local image region first and then compare the summarisation (such as feature based methods), or you compare each pixel first (such as squaring the difference) and then summarise over a local image region (block base motion and filter based motion). An emerging type of matching criteria summarises a local image region first for every pixel location (through some feature transform such as Laplacian transform), compares each summarised pixel and summarises over a local image region again. [4] Some matching criteria have the ability to exclude points that do not actually correspond to each other albeit producing a good matching score, others do not have this ability, but they are still matching criteria.

## Applications

### Video coding

Applying the motion vectors to an image to synthesize the transformation to the next image is called motion compensation. [5] It is most easily applied to discrete cosine transform (DCT) based video coding standards, because the coding is performed in blocks. [6]

As a way of exploiting temporal redundancy, motion estimation and compensation are key parts of video compression. Almost all video coding standards use block-based motion estimation and compensation such as the MPEG series including the most recent HEVC.

### 3D reconstruction

In simultaneous localization and mapping, a 3D model of a scene is reconstructed using images from a moving camera. [7]

## Related Research Articles

Computer vision is an interdisciplinary scientific field that deals with how computers can be made to gain high-level understanding from digital images or videos. From the perspective of engineering, it seeks to automate tasks that the human visual system can do.

In signal processing, data compression, source coding, or bit-rate reduction is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation. Any particular compression is either lossy or lossless. Lossless compression reduces bits by identifying and eliminating statistical redundancy. No information is lost in lossless compression. Lossy compression reduces bits by removing unnecessary or less important information. Typically, a device that performs data compression is referred to as an encoder, and one that performs the reversal of the process (decompression) as a decoder.

Vector quantization (VQ) is a classical quantization technique from signal processing that allows the modeling of probability density functions by the distribution of prototype vectors. It was originally used for data compression. It works by dividing a large set of points (vectors) into groups having approximately the same number of points closest to them. Each group is represented by its centroid point, as in k-means and some other clustering algorithms.

Motion compensation is an algorithmic technique used to predict a frame in a video, given the previous and/or future frames by accounting for motion of the camera and/or objects in the video. It is employed in the encoding of video data for video compression, for example in the generation of MPEG-2 files. Motion compensation describes a picture in terms of the transformation of a reference picture to the current picture. The reference picture may be previous in time or even from the future. When images can be accurately synthesized from previously transmitted/stored images, the compression efficiency can be improved.

Image registration is the process of transforming different sets of data into one coordinate system. Data may be multiple photographs, data from different sensors, times, depths, or viewpoints. It is used in computer vision, medical imaging, military automatic target recognition, and compiling and analyzing images and data from satellites. Registration is necessary in order to be able to compare or integrate the data obtained from these different measurements.

A compression artifact is a noticeable distortion of media caused by the application of lossy compression. Lossy data compression involves discarding some of the media's data so that it becomes small enough to be stored within the desired disk space or transmitted (streamed) within the available bandwidth. If the compressor cannot store enough data in the compressed version, the result is a loss of quality, or introduction of artifacts. The compression algorithm may not be intelligent enough to discriminate between distortions of little subjective importance and those objectionable to the user.

The scale-invariant feature transform (SIFT) is a feature detection algorithm in computer vision to detect and describe local features in images. It was patented in Canada by the University of British Columbia and published by David Lowe in 1999. Applications include object recognition, robotic mapping and navigation, image stitching, 3D modeling, gesture recognition, video tracking, individual identification of wildlife and match moving.

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Image stitching or photo stitching is the process of combining multiple photographic images with overlapping fields of view to produce a segmented panorama or high-resolution image. Commonly performed through the use of computer software, most approaches to image stitching require nearly exact overlaps between images and identical exposures to produce seamless results, although some stitching algorithms actually benefit from differently exposed images by doing high-dynamic-range imaging in regions of overlap. Some digital cameras can stitch their photos internally.

A Block Matching Algorithm is a way of locating matching macroblocks in a sequence of digital video frames for the purposes of motion estimation. The underlying supposition behind motion estimation is that the patterns corresponding to objects and background in a frame of video sequence move within the frame to form corresponding objects on the subsequent frame. This can be used to discover temporal redundancy in the video sequence, increasing the effectiveness of inter-frame video compression by defining the contents of a macroblock by reference to the contents of a known macroblock which is minimally different.

In digital image processing, sub-pixel resolution can be obtained in images constructed from sources with information exceeding the nominal pixel resolution of said images.

Television standards conversion is the process of changing one type of television system to another. The most common is from NTSC to PAL or the other way around. This is done so television programs in one nation may be viewed in a nation with a different standard. The video is fed through a video standards converter that changes the video to a different video system.

Range segmentation is the task of segmenting (dividing) a range image, an image containing depth information for each pixel, into segments (regions), so that all the points of the same surface belong to the same region, there is no overlap between different regions and the union of these regions generates the entire image.

Rate-distortion optimization (RDO) is a method of improving video quality in video compression. The name refers to the optimization of the amount of distortion against the amount of data required to encode the video, the rate. While it is primarily used by video encoders, rate-distortion optimization can be used to improve quality in any encoding situation where decisions have to be made that affect both file size and quality simultaneously.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to object recognition:

In robotics and computer vision, visual odometry is the process of determining the position and orientation of a robot by analyzing the associated camera images. It has been used in a wide variety of robotic applications, such as on the Mars Exploration Rovers.

Local binary patterns (LBP) is a type of visual descriptor used for classification in computer vision. LBP is the particular case of the Texture Spectrum model proposed in 1990. LBP was first described in 1994. It has since been found to be a powerful feature for texture classification; it has further been determined that when LBP is combined with the Histogram of oriented gradients (HOG) descriptor, it improves the detection performance considerably on some datasets. A comparison of several improvements of the original LBP in the field of background subtraction was made in 2015 by Silva et al. A full survey of the different versions of LBP can be found in Bouwmans et al.

In computer vision, rigid motion segmentation is the process of separating regions, features, or trajectories from a video sequence into coherent subsets of space and time. These subsets correspond to independent rigidly moving objects in the scene. The goal of this segmentation is to differentiate and extract the meaningful rigid motion from the background and analyze it. Image segmentation techniques labels the pixels to be a part of pixels with certain characteristics at a particular time. Here, the pixels are segmented depending on its relative movement over a period of time i.e. the time of the video sequence.

In image processing, point feature matching is an effective method to detect a specified target in a cluttered scene. This method detects single objects rather than multiple objects. For instance, by using this method, one can recognize one specific person in a cluttered scene, but not any other person.

## References

1. John X. Liu (2006). Computer Vision and Robotics. Nova Publishers. ISBN   978-1-59454-357-9.
2. Philip H.S. Torr and Andrew Zisserman: Feature Based Methods for Structure and Motion Estimation, ICCV Workshop on Vision Algorithms, pages 278-294, 1999
3. Michal Irani and P. Anandan: About Direct Methods, ICCV Workshop on Vision Algorithms, pages 267-277, 1999.
4. Rui Xu, David Taubman & Aous Thabit Naman, 'Motion Estimation Based on Mutual Information and Adaptive Multi-scale Thresholding', in Image Processing, IEEE Transactions on , vol.25, no.3, pp.1095-1108, March 2016.
5. Borko Furht; Joshua Greenberg; Raymond Westwater (6 December 2012). Motion Estimation Algorithms for Video Compression. Springer Science & Business Media. ISBN   978-1-4615-6241-2.
6. Swartz, Charles S. (2005). Understanding Digital Cinema: A Professional Handbook. Taylor & Francis. p. 143. ISBN   9780240806174.
7. Kerl, Christian, Jürgen Sturm, and Daniel Cremers. "Dense visual SLAM for RGB-D cameras." 2013 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. IEEE, 2013.