Low Complexity Global Motion Estimation Techniques for Image Stabilization

Two new global motion estimation methods are proposed. The first one, called sign projection (SP) is obtained by modifying the integral projection estimation method using two thresholds for pixel values. The second method, called binary incrementation (BI), is obtained by using only one threshold for generating binary vectors from two images. It is shown that the proposed approaches provide similar motion estimation accuracy with the integral projection (IP) and phase correlation (PC) methods. Also, they have reduced numerical complexity and memory requirements, leading to shorter processing times as well as lower power consumption. The technique is particularly suitable for implementation in consumer devices such as digital video cameras.