Block motion matching on directional subbands with interband suppression

We propose a novel matching metric for dense block-based true-motion estimation. Block-based matching scores are calculated on directional detail bands of a steerable pyramid after conversion to a 2-bit representation. The proposed non-linear transform involves a novel inter-band suppression mechanism so that matching scores can be accumulated across resolutions and directions. We show that edge features of different strength that occupy similar locations can be isolated in different directional bands, after which the 2-bit transformation effectively equalises their contrast. This considerably improves the robustness of motion estimation procedure when compared to other matching metrics, including our prior work and the commonly used MSE.