Patent ID: 6977664

Claim:
A foreground object and background sprite separation and extraction method for extracting a foreground object and a background sprite, comprising the steps of: obtaining a global motion for transforming a coordinate system between a reference frame and a frame for each of frames in a moving image; mapping an original image corresponding to said frame into a reference coordinate system for said each of frames by using said global motion, and obtaining a pixel value at a point in said reference coordinate system from pixel values of pixels which exist in the same point; generating a provisional sprite where foreground objects are deleted; cutting out a first image from said provisional sprite by using said global motion; obtaining a difference image between said first image and said original image; extracting, with the provisional sprite, a foreground object image as a region in said difference image where each difference value in the region is equal to or higher than a threshold, and an other region as a background image; mapping said background image to said reference coordinate system by using said global motion for said each of frames by inserting a new pixel in a point where a pixel value is not yet decided, or by overwriting a pixel, for generating, with the provisional sprite, and outputting a background sprite without the foreground objects.