A spatial domain error concealment algorithm with texture recovery for MPEG2

The MPEG-2 compression algorithm is very sensitive to channel disturbances due to the use of variable-length coding. A single bit error during transmission leads to noticeable degradation of the decoded sequence quality, in that part or for an entire slice, information is lost until the next resynchronization point is reached. Error concealment (EC) methods, implemented at the decoded side, present one way of dealing with this problem. In this paper, based on smoothness, consistency, and fractal behavior, a spatial domain error concealment algorithm with texture recovery for MPEG-2 video streams is presented by using the full information of adjacent macroblocks (MB), instead of using only a one pixel wide area around the missing block. Since the left and right neighboring MBs of the lost MB are often erroneous, the proposed algorithm utilizes only the top and bottom MBs of the lost MB to conceal the lost data. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can recovery texture information in lost MBs and provide better visual quality in comparison with the conventional spatial domain interpolation algorithms.