A superresolution imaging method based on dense subpixel-accurate motion fields

A superresolution imaging method suitable for imaging objects moving in a dynamic scene is described. The main operations are performed over three threads: the computation of a dense interframe 2D motion-field induced by the moving objects at subpixel resolution in the first thread. Concurrently, each video image frame is enlarged by cascade of an ideal low-pass filter and a higher rate sampler, essentially stretching each image onto a larger grid. Then, the main task is to synthesize a higher resolution image, from the stretched image of the first frame, and that of the subsequent frames subjected to suitable motion compensation. A simple averaging process and/or a simplified Kalman filter may be used to minimize the spatio-temporal noise, in the aggregation process. The method takes advantage of widely used MPEG-4 encoding hardware/software tools. A few experimental cases are presented with a basic description of the key operations performed in the overall process.