Fast motion estimation algorithm using multilevel distortion search in Walsh–Hadamard domain

• Published in: IET image processing Vol. 11; no. 1; pp. 22 - 30
• Main Authors: Dong, Liang, Pan, Zhibin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: The Institution of Engineering and Technology 01.01.2017
• Subjects: Algorithms; block‐matching motion estimation; BME; Coding; coding process; Computation; computational complexity; Distortion; fast motion estimation algorithm; Hadamard transforms; image matching; image sequences; Matching; motion estimation; Motion simulation; Multilevel; multilevel distortion search; partial block matching distortion; partial distortion search algorithm; peak signal to noise ratio; Research Article; search problems; Searching; subblocks; template search motion estimation algorithm; temporal redundancy; video compression coding system; video sequences; video signal processing; Walsh‐Hadamard domain; partial distortion search algorithm; Hadamard transforms; peak signal to noise ratio; coding process; block-matching motion estimation; Walsh-Hadamard domain; subblocks; image matching; partial block matching distortion; template search motion estimation algorithm; multilevel distortion search; motion estimation; video sequences; temporal redundancy; BME; video signal processing; search problems; image sequences; fast motion estimation algorithm; video compression coding system; computational complexity
• ISSN: 1751-9659; 1751-9667
• DOI: 10.1049/iet-ipr.2016.0453

Block-matching motion estimation (BME) can efficiently reduce the temporal redundancy between the successive video sequences in video compression coding system. In this study, a fast BME algorithm using multilevel distortion search in Walsh–Hadamard domain is proposed to reduce the computational burden and speed up coding process. First, the proposed algorithm divides the block into several sub-blocks. Then, the Walsh–Hadamard transform is applied to these sub-blocks. Finally, the proposed algorithm calculates the partial block matching distortion by utilising a novel back diagonal search scheme which can quickly reject unnecessary candidate block in a multilevel manner. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm effectively reduces the number of operations in block distortion calculation meanwhile maintains the best motion estimation matching quality. Compared with the full search, the proposed algorithm can reduce 87.19% computational complexity without any degradation of the peak signal to noise ratio. In addition, compared with the partial distortion search algorithm, successive elimination algorithm, multilevel successive elimination algorithm and the transform-domain successive elimination algorithm, the proposed algorithm can also save 68.27, 70.09, 37.81 and 37.44% computational complexity, respectively. Moreover, the proposed algorithm can also be easily incorporated into any block-based template search motion estimation algorithm.