Interpolative coding of image sequences using temporal linking of motion-based segmentation

This paper presents a new temporal interpolation algorithm based on segmentation of images into polygonal regions undergoing affine motion. The goal of this work is to improve upon the block-based interpolation used in MPEG (B-frames). We briefly describe the region-based framework and the temporal linking algorithm that jointly provide the segmentation and motion parameters. We also present various applications of the proposed algorithm to temporal interpolative prediction. We examine one of these schemes in detail, including the special processing of occlusion areas. Results are illustrated by predicted images and using the MSE criterion we compare their quality with other schemes.