A neighborhood-blocks motion estimation technique using the pyramidal data structure

In this paper, a pyramidal motion estimation technique that makes use of the motion correlation within a pyramidal level is proposed. Instead of scaling the motion vectors from the adjacent lower pyramidal level as motion predictions as is done in the conventional technique, in the proposed technique, the motion vectors from the neighboring motion blocks are taken into consideration as possible candidates. Each of these candidate motion vectors is used for prediction and refined. The motion vector that has the least matching distortion is chosen as the final motion vector. Compared to the conventional pyramidal motion estimation technique, the proposed method effectively overcomes the problem of propagation of false motion vectors. Simulation studies show that a substantial performance improvement is achieved, both in terms of the prediction mean square error and the number of coding bits for the motion vectors.