This paper describes a methodology for using the matrix-vector multiply and scan conversion hardware present in many graphics workstations to rapidly approximate the optical flow in a scene. The optical flow is a 2-dimensional vector field describing the onscreen motion of each pixel. An application of the optical flow to MPEG compression is described which results in improved compression with minimal overhead. CR Categories and Subject Descriptors: I.2.10 [Artificial Intelligence]: Vision and Scene Understanding; I.3.3 [Computer Graphics]: Picture/Image Generation; I.3.7 [Computer Graphics]: Three-Dimensional Graphics and Realism; I.4.2 [Image Processing]: Compression (coding) Additional Key Words: MPEG; optical flow; motion prediction.
Dan S. Wallach, Sharma Kunapalli, Michael F. Cohen