A robust digital image stabilization technique based on inverse triangle method and background detection

Abstract

In this paper, a novel robust digital image stabilization (DIS) technique is proposed to stably remove the unwanted shaking phenomena in the image sequences captured by hand-held camcorders without affecting moving objects in the image sequence and intentional motion of panning condition, etc. It consists of a motion estimation unit and a motion compensation unit. To increase the robustness in adverse image conditions, an inverse triangle method is proposed to extract reliable motion vectors in plain images which are lack of features or contain large low-contrast area, etc., and a background evaluation model is developed to deal with irregular images which contain large moving objects, etc. In the motion compensation unit, a CMV estimation method with an inner feedback-loop integrator is proposed to stably remove the unwanted shaking phenomena without losing the effective area of the image in panning condition. We also propose a smoothness index (SI) to quantitatively evaluate the performances of different image stabilization methods. The experimental results are on-line available to demonstrate the remarkable performance of the proposed DIS technique.(1.2).