Patent ID: 7634111
Filing Date: 2009-12-15
Classification: H04N

Abstract:
1. An image processing apparatus for deriving a motion vector relative to a current frame and a preceding/subsequent frame of an image, comprising: a first feature extraction unit configured to extract from a current frame, an image feature used as an address, wherein a feature is a pixel value of a block having a focused pixel at the center of the block, said first feature extraction portion further configured to extract spatial coordinates of the focused pixel relative to the current frame, the extracted data of the first feature extracting unit defining first address data; a second feature extraction unit configured to extract from a preceding/subsequent frame, the same image feature, spatial coordinates of the focused pixel relative to the preceding/subsequent frame, and distance information relative to an area of the preceding/subsequent frame in the vicinity of the focused pixel, the extracted data of the second feature extracting unit defining second address data; a database, communicatively linked to the first and second feature extraction units for receiving the first and second address data, the database storing the spatial coordinates of the first and second data in association with multi-dimensional feature axes by storing spatial coordinates in two dimensional space in a buffer linked to a position of the spatial coordinates in three dimensional space within a feature space, the second data also being stored in association with the distance information; and a motion vector detector configured to derive the motion vector between the current frame and preceding/subsequent frame by obtaining the first address data from the database, using the first address data in the database as an index, and determining a reliability of the motion vector based upon the distance information of the second address information as it relates to the focused pixel of the image feature of the current frame.