Motion-distorted composite-frame restoration

Many imaging systems produce pictures by the superimposition of two fields of frames of interlaced sequences. Pictures obtained in this way, which are termed composite frames, are severely degraded if relative motion between the camera and the scene occurs. In the presence of motion the composite fr ame is affected by two types of distortion: the edge staircase effect that is due to the fact that objects appear at different positions in successive fields and motion blur that is due to scene motion during each field expos ure. Motion-deinterlacing methods previously proposed to recover the stairc ase effect neglect motion blur. However, motion blur may be significant, es pecially in systems designed for low-intensity radiometric imaging that use long exposures or even in short-exposure systems that happen to be in movi ng vehicles such as tanks, planes, ships, etc. We introduce an algorithm fo r the restoration of the two types of distortion in a composite frame degra ded by linear uniform motion. (C) 1999 Optical Society of America.