Fast Block Edge Direction Analysis

For image and video compression standards, one image is divided into a serial of non-overlapped blocks. Detecting edge existence and analyzing the edge direction in a block level is useful in the applications, such as perceptually improved coding, MB encoding mode decision, blocking artifacts reduction, content-based retrieval, senses changing detection, etc. This paper proposes a novel Fast Block Edge Direction Analysis method in pixel domain. One block is classified into one of the 16 edge patterns: No edge pattern plus 15 different direction edge with extremely low complexity.