Selective block matching algorithm for video system

An error concealment (or recovery) algorithm useful for transmitting image frames on Internet-based applications is presented. The selective block matching algorithm (SBMA) recovers the lost blocks by incorporating the selective spatial interpolation (only selected pixels are interpolated) and the side match algorithm (SMA) to achieve smooth restoration of lost blocks. First, pixels of lost blocks that have small likelihood of being high frequency components are selected for spatial interpolation. Subsequently, a lost block is replaced by the candidate block identified based on a matching criterion. Because of its accurate selectivity in interpolation, recovery results of SBMA are smoother than those by using either the spatial interpolation or side match criterion alone.