A super-resolution imaging method based on dense subpixel-accurate motion fields

Abstract

A super-resolution imaging method suitable for imaging objects moving in a dynamic scene is described. The primary operations are performed over three threads: the computation of a dense inter-frame 2-D motion field induced by the moving objects at a sub-pixel resolution in the first thread. Concurrently, each video image frame is enlarged by the cascode of an ideal low-pass filter and a higher rate sampler, essentially stretching each image onto a larger grid. Then, the main task is to synthesize a higher resolution image from the stretched image of the first frame and that of the subsequent frames subject to a suitable motion compensation. A simple averaging process and/or a simplified Kalman filter may be used to minimize the spatio-temporal noise, in the aggregation process. The method is simple and can take advantage of common MPEG-4 encoding tools. A few experimental cases are presented with a basic description of the key operations performed in the over all process. ?? Springer Science + Business Media, Inc. 2006.