Patent ID: 7623682

Claim:
A method of estimating a motion of a panorama image containing 360° omni-directional view information, the method comprising the following steps: padding a padding region connected to the outer left side of the left border of a basic reference frame to be used for motion estimation of the panorama image, using corresponding pixel values of a right border region of the basic reference frame, padding a padding region connected to the outer right side of the right border of the basic reference frame using corresponding pixel values of a left border region thereof, and making a reference frame by expanding the basic reference frame including the padded regions, wherein the right border region is the region inside and adjacent the right border of the basic reference frame and the left border region is the region inside and adjacent the left border of the basic reference frame; estimating a motion vector of a current data unit of the panorama image, using motion vectors of a plurality of previous data units adjacent to the current data unit; determining values of all pixels of a reference data unit indicated by the estimated motion vector from the reference frame by obtaining a set value of a sub pixel when the sub pixel belongs to the reference frame, and obtaining a value of a corresponding sub pixel with an x-coordinate determined by setting an x-coordinate of the sub pixel to a value obtained by adding a distance on an x-axis between a border of the basic reference frame adjacent to the sub pixel and the sub pixel to an x-coordinate of an opposite border of the basic reference frame, when the sub pixel is located outside the left border of the reference frame, and subtracting the distance from the x-coordinate of the opposite border when the sub pixel is located outside the right border of the reference frame; and determining a similarity between the current data unit and the reference data unit using a predetermined evaluation function; wherein the padding, estimating, and determining steps are carried out by a processor.