Spatial Error Concealment Using Directional Extrapolation

A new spatial error concealment algorithm based on directional extrapolation is presented. Practical communication channels are not error free. Data corruption or loss may be caused by network congestion, signal fade, various noise, etc. Error concealment is an important and practical scheme to solve such problems. Spatial error concealment is aimed at masking the effect of missing blocks by making use of the properties of smoothness and edge continuity in the spatial domain of an image or intra frame. This paper presents a spatial directional extrapolation algorithm that addresses concealment of missing image blocks on pixel-by-pixel basis. After determining the direction of edge which traverses the to-be-recovered pixel, the pixel is recovered by extrapolation along the corresponding direction. Experimental results demonstrate the performance improvement of the proposed method over conventional algorithms.