FPGA implementation for real-time Chroma-key effect using Coarse and Fine Filter

Chroma-key is a robust and important technique for processing image or video that is widely used in cinema films, magazine covers, video game industries as well as television programs such as weather forecast, live talk show, ect. This paper presents study of Chroma-key method and proposes a hardware architecture for Chroma-key effect in real-time. Based on K-means algorithm, we propose an improved method namely Coarse and Fine Filter, which is more robust on segmentation and more appropriate for hardware design thanks to usage of small buffer. A VLSI architecture for the proposed method is implemented on the Altera DE2 FPGA board. Experimental results show that the proposed design can perform Chroma-key effect with pleasing quality in real-time.