Pel-recursive motion estimation in the presence of illumination variations

We consider motion estimation between two images in the presence of illumination variations in the scene. The standard motion model is extended and an autoregressive prediction model obtained. The added prediction coefficient is interpreted as an illumination variation parameter. A pel-recursive motion estimator is adapted to this motion model in order to estimate both motion and illumination variation fields. We present coding experiments on real images containing localised illumination variations and note that the proposed approach allows the prediction error to be greatly reduced compared to the standard pel-recursive algorithm. This algorithm may also be used in other applications such as frame interpolation.