Patent ID: 7053962

Claim:
A method for determining an image shift in an image sequence to compensate for an image source movement, a plurality of image zones of images being available to determine the image shift, each of the plurality of image zones being at a specific position in the images and each having predefined dimensions of predefined numbers of pixels in different image directions, the method comprising: determining the image shift from one of (i) first image data of the first image and second image data of a second image, and (ii) the first image data of the first image and input image data of an input image for use in correcting the first image in the image sequence; determining a zone shift of any given image zone of the plurality of image zones from one of (i) the first image data of the first image and the second image data of the second image within the given image zone, and (ii) the first image data of the first image and the input image data of the input image within the given image zone, including determining the zone shift in two image zones and determining a reliability for the zone shift determination by: forming the zone shift and a correlation quotient for each of the two image zones; determining a threshold value function as a function of a corresponding value of determined zone shifts in the two image zones; comparing the correlation quotient of one of the two image zones to a comparison value obtained from the threshold value function for a zone shift of another of the two image zones; determining that the reliability of the zone shift determination is adequate for the one image zone of the two image zones if the correlation quotient determined for the one image zone is greater than the comparison value; and using the zone shift of one image zone of the plurality of image zones as the image shift as a function of the reliability for the zone shift determination of the one image zone.