A fast feature matching algorithm of multi-resolution motion estimation

A multiresolution motion estimation (MRME) algorithm based on the feature representation of image data, is developed. The sign truncated feature (STF) vector is derived for the feature matching phase of the motion estimation process. MRME can be performed on the STF vectors in full range motion search without the need for a search window control. The MRME algorithm is suitable for real-time VLSI pipeline and parallel processing, implementations with large searching windows for full search motion compensation. It needs 160% extra frame memory for the feature pyramid buffer. It can be more than ten times faster than conventional pixel-by-pixel intensity matching schemes, if a parallel 20-bit template matching operator is used