Patent Document ID: 6044114
Application ID: 08838488
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A method of segmenting time-sequential images of a picture signal, comprising the steps of: splitting each of the images up into regions during segmentation; associating adjacent pixels having similar luminance and/or chrominance values with each of the regions; retracing regions of an image I.sub.n in a subsequent image I.sub.n+1 by performing a motion estimation of the regions of the image I.sub.n ; determining a new position for each of the regions in the image I.sub.n+1 with reference to motion vectors determined for each region by means of the motion estimation in order to produce displaced regions; adapting the displaced regions to the image contents of the image I.sub.n+1 ; adding pixels of the image I.sub.n+1 not covered by the adopted regions to one of the adopted regions or to newly formed regions.