Patent ID: 7277558

Claim:
A method for estimating a position of moving objects in a set of image data, wherein the objects are occluded in at least a portion of the image data, the method comprising the steps of: identifying a position of an object in a first frame of image data acquired at a first time based on first positional values of the object and first stabilization values of the object, the stabilization values being associated with movement in background of the image data; determining that the object is undetected in a second frame of image data acquired at a second time; associating second positional values of the object and second stabilization values of the object with the second frame of image data; estimating movement of the object to determine its estimated position in the second frame of image data by compensating for image destabilization and by using at least one of velocity and acceleration of the object and time between frames of image data, wherein the estimating step includes calculating positional difference values of the object using the first and second positional values, calculating stabilization difference values of the object using the first and second stabilization values, subtracting stabilization difference values from positional difference values for each frame of image data to generate stabilized positional difference values; using the estimated position to determine a position of the object in a third frame of image data acquired at a third time; and calculating an actual movement of the object by adding the stabilization difference values to the estimated movement.