Resolving Objects at Higher Resolution from a Single Motion-blurred Image

Motion blur can degrade the quality of images and is considered a nuisance for computer vision problems. In this paper, we show that motion blur can in-fact be used for increasing the resolution of a moving object. Our approach utilizes the information in a single motion-blurred image without any image priors or training images. As the blur size increases, the resolution of the moving object can be enhanced by a larger factor, albeit with a corresponding increase in reconstruction noise. Traditionally, motion deblurring and super-resolution have been ill-posed problems. Using a coded-exposure camera that preserves high spatial frequencies in the blurred image, we present a linear algorithm for the combined problem of deblurring and resolution enhancement and analyze the invertibility of the resulting linear system. We also show a method to selectively enhance the resolution of a narrow region of high-frequency features, when the resolution of the entire moving object cannot be increased due to small motion blur. Results on real images showing up to four times resolution enhancement are presented.