Robust blockmatching motion-estimation technique for noisy sources

Video coding standards use the block-matching algorithm (BMA) and motion-compensated prediction to reduce tem-poral redundancies present in image sequences. Block match-ing is used since it is computationally ecient and pro-duces a minimal representation of the motion eld that is transmitted as side information. In order to build a ro-bust coder the motion-estimation technique must be able to track motion in a noisy source. The approach presented in this paper uses spatio-temporal motion prediction, pro-viding an accurate motion estimate even in the presence of noise. With this approach, noisy sources can be com-pressed eciently and robustly in standard video coders (e.g., MPEG-1, MPEG-2, H.261, and H.263 [1]) with little increase in complexity