Motion estimation with optical flow-based adaptive search region

An optical flow-based motion estimation algorithm is proposed for video cod ing. The algorithm is based on the fact that true motion vectors have simil ar characteristics to optical how vectors. The algorithm uses block matchin g motion estimation with an adaptive search region. The search region is co mputed from motion-fields that are estimated based on the optical flow. The results obtained using test images show that the proposed algorithm can pr oduce a significant improvement compared with previous optical flow algorit hm and block matching algorithm.