Patent ID: 8306121

Claim:
A non-transitory computer readable medium carrying one or more sequences of one or more instructions for execution by one or more processors to perform a method of generating a super-resolution image using a sequence of low resolution images, the instructions when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to: generate a second estimated high resolution image by motion-compensated back projecting a first estimated high resolution image using motion estimation results between said first estimated high resolution image and a plurality of high resolution comparison images derived from the sequence of low resolution images, wherein the motion estimation results are generated by a method comprising: temporally sequencing a first working sequence including a first set of comparison images from the plurality of high resolution comparison images, a second set of comparison images from the plurality of high resolution comparison images, and the first estimated high resolution image, wherein each image in the first set of comparison images is derived from a respective low resolution image occurring before the first low resolution image in the sequence of low resolution images, and wherein each image in the second set of comparison images is derived from a respective low resolution image occurring after the first low resolution image in the sequence of low resolution images; computing motion vectors between each pair of neighboring images from the first working sequence, between each pair of neighboring images from the second working sequence, between the first estimated high resolution image and an image from the first working sequence, and between the first estimated high resolution image and an image from the second working sequence; generating a set of estimated motion vectors between the first estimated high resolution image and images in the first working sequence and the second working sequence, wherein the set of estimated motion vectors is generated by combining the computed motion vectors; and refining the estimated motion vectors; and generate the super-resolution image by motion-free back projecting the second estimated high resolution image.