Patent ID: 8379996

Claim:
An image processing method of finding a motion vector between an original image and a reference image, comprising: dividing said original image to extract a block; searching for a similar region of said block from said reference image from a comparison of projection components of an image feature amount of said reference image and said block when a size of said block is larger than a predetermined size Sb and searching for said similar region from a spatial comparison of said reference image and said block when the size of said block is smaller than said size Sb to detect a motion vector of said block; further dividing said block into smaller lower blocks to extract said lower block; and searching for a similar region of said lower block from said reference image from a comparison of projection components of an image feature amount of said reference image and said lower block when a size of said lower block is larger than said size Sb and searching for said similar region of said lower block from a spatial comparison of said reference image and said lower block when the size of said lower block is smaller than said size Sb to detect a motion vector of said lower block with a range in the vicinity of the motion vector of said block, which is a division source, as a start position, and holding the obtained motion vector of said lower block in a tree data structure.