Flicker removal and superpixel-based motion tracking for high speed videos

Flicker removal consists of filtering out rapid, artefactual changes of luminosity and colorimetry from image sequences in order to improve colorimetry consistency between video frames. It is a necessary and fundamental task in multiple applications, for instance in archived film sequences, image/video compression and time-lapse videos. In recent years, the wider availability of fast video acquisition technology has renewed the interest in the flicker removal problem, in particular periodic flicker. In this context, rapid, undesirable intensity and chroma variations are due to acquisition hardware performing faster than the frequency of alternating current powering artificial light sources. This paper proposes both theoretical and efficient experimental solutions for flicker removal from image sequences by performing simultaneous motion tracking and color correction using a superpixel image representation.