Motion Estimation Method Research Articles

GPS and Stereovision-Based Visual Odometry: Application to Urban Scene Mapping and Intelligent Vehicle Localization

We propose an approach for vehicle localization in dense urban environments using a stereoscopic system and a GPS sensor. Stereoscopic system is used to capture the stereo video flow, to recover the environments, and to estimate the vehicle motion based on feature detection, matching, and triangulation from every image pair. A relative depth constraint is applied to eliminate the tracking couples which are inconsistent with the vehicle ego-motion. Then the optimal rotation and translation between the current and the reference frames are computed using an RANSAC based minimization method. Meanwhile, GPS positions are obtained by an on-board GPS receiver and periodically used to adjust the vehicle orientations and positions estimated by stereovision. The proposed method is tested with two real sequences obtained by a GEM vehicle equipped with a stereoscopic system and a RTK-GPS receiver. The results show that the vision/GPS integrated trajectory can fit the ground truth better than the vision-only method, especially for the vehicle orientation. And vice-versa, the stereovision-based motion estimation method can correct the GPS signal failures (e.g., GPS jumps) due to multipath problem or other noises.

Real-Time Upper Limb Motion Estimation From Surface Electromyography and Joint Angular Velocities Using an Artificial Neural Network for Human–Machine Cooperation

A current challenge with human-machine cooperation systems is to estimate human motions to facilitate natural cooperation and safety of the human. It is a logical approach to estimate the motions from their sources (skeletal muscles); thus, we employed surface electromyography (SEMG) to estimate body motions. In this paper, we investigated a cooperative manipulation control by an upper limb motion estimation method using SEMG and joint angular velocities. The SEMG signals from five upper limb muscles and angular velocities of the limb joints were used to approximate the flexion-extension of the limb in the 2-D sagittal plane. The experimental results showed that the proposed estimation method provides acceptable performance of the motion estimation [normalized root mean square error (NRMSE) <0.15, correlation coefficient (CC) >0.9] under the noncontact condition. From the analysis of the results, we found the necessity of the angular velocity input and estimation error feedback due to physical contact. Our results suggest that the estimation method can be useful for a natural human-machine cooperation control.

2D–3D shape reconstruction of the distal femur from stereo X-ray imaging using statistical shape models

Three-dimensional patient specific bone models are required in a range of medical applications, such as pre-operative surgery planning and improved guidance during surgery, modeling and simulation, and in vivo bone motion tracking. Shape reconstruction from a small number of X-ray images is desired as it lowers both the acquisition costs and the radiation dose compared to CT. We propose a method for pose estimation and shape reconstruction of 3D bone surfaces from two (or more) calibrated X-ray images using a statistical shape model (SSM). User interaction is limited to manual initialization of the mean shape. The proposed method combines a 3D distance based objective function with automatic edge selection on a Canny edge map. Landmark-edge correspondences are weighted based on the orientation difference of the projected silhouette and the corresponding image edge. The method was evaluated by rigid pose estimation of ground truth shapes as well as 3D shape estimation using a SSM of the whole femur, from stereo cadaver X-rays, in vivo biplane fluoroscopy image-pairs, and an in vivo biplane fluoroscopic sequence. Ground truth shapes for all experiments were available in the form of CT segmentations. Rigid registration of the ground truth shape to the biplane fluoroscopy achieved sub-millimeter accuracy (0.68mm) measured as root mean squared (RMS) point-to-surface (P2S) distance. The non-rigid reconstruction from the biplane fluoroscopy using the SSM also showed promising results (1.68mm RMS P2S). A feasibility study on one fluoroscopic time series illustrates the potential of the method for motion and shape estimation from fluoroscopic sequences with minimal user interaction.

Weighted constrained one-bit transform based fast block motion estimation

Block based motion estimation (ME) techniques based on low bit-depth representation have been proposed in the literature to reduce the computational complexity of ME. One-bit transform based ME methods are pioneers in this field. These methods derive one-bit images using an adaptive thresholding scheme, and perform block based ME on one-bit images using simplified matching criteria. Recently, constrained one-bit transform (C-1BT) based ME has been proposed to increase ME performance of 1BT based ME, restraining pixels with values close to the adaptive threshold throughout the matching. In this work, a weighted constraint strategy is proposed to increase the matching performance of C-1BT based ME. Instead of the one-bit constraint mask used in the literature, a two-bit constraint is computed according to the difference between a pixel and its 1BT threshold value, novel to this paper. Experimental results show that the proposed method improves the ME performance of C-1BT, and outperforms other low bit-depth based ME methods at macro-block level.

Adaptive search range motion estimation using neighboring motion vector differences

This paper presents a new fast motion estimation method where search ranges are determined by the probabilities of motion vector differences (MVDs). The MVDs' distribution is investigated and its parameter is estimated by the maximum likelihood estimator. With the estimated distribution, the search ranges are efficiently restricted by a prefixed probability for MVDs. Experimental results show that the performance of the proposed method is very similar to that of the full search algorithm in PSNR but it enables significant reduction in the computational complexity.

Optimization of Hierarchical 3DRS Motion Estimators for Picture Rate Conversion

There is a continuous pressure to lower the implementation complexity and improve the quality of motion-compensated picture rate conversion methods. Since the concept of hierarchy can be advantageously applied to many motion estimation methods, we have extended and improved the current state-of-the-art motion estimation method in this field, 3-D Recursive Search (3DRS), with this concept. We have explored the extensive parameter space and present an analysis of the importance and influence of the various parameters for the application of picture rate conversion. Since well-performing motion estimation methods for picture rate conversion show a tradeoff between prediction accuracy and spatial motion field consistency, determining the optimal tradeoff is an important part of the analysis. We found that the proposed motion estimators are superior to multiple existing techniques as well as standard 3DRS with regard to performance at a low computational complexity.

Efficient Motion Field Interpolation Method for Wyner-Ziv Video Coding

Wyner-Ziv video coding has the capability to reduce video encoding complexity by shifting motion estimation procedure from encoder to decoder. Amongst many motion estimation methods, e xpectation m aximization algorithm is the most effective one. Unfortunately, the implementation of block-based motion estimation in this algorithm causes motion field profile bounded by granularity of block size. Nearest-neighbor and bilinear interpolation methods have already applied in multiview image coding to handle similar problem. This paper aims to evaluate performance of both interpolation methods in transform-domain Wyner-Ziv video codec. Results showed that bilinear interpolation effective only for high motion video sequences. In this scenario, it has bitrate saving up to 3.29 %, 0.2 dB higher PSNR, and 12.30 % higher decoding complexity compared to nearest-neighbor. In low motion video content, bitrate saving only gained up to 0.82%, with almost the same PSNR, while decoding complexity increase up to 10.32%.

Simulation based evaluation of cardiac motion estimation methods in tagged-MR Image sequences

Several methods have been proposed to estimate myocardial motion from those based on the prior extraction of the tagging pattern to methods based on spatial phases [1]. Among several, the HARP method is one of the most popular methods of the latter group. Recently, an alternative method has been proposed: SinMod. It is however very difficult to objectively compare the accuracy of the methods.

A Fast Sub-Pixel Motion Estimation Algorithm for H.264/AVC Video Coding

Motion estimation (ME) is one of the most time-consuming parts in video coding. The use of multiple partition sizes in H.264/AVC makes it even more complicated when compared to ME in conventional video coding standards. It is important to develop fast and effective sub-pixel ME algorithms since: 1) the computation overhead by sub-pixel ME has become relatively significant while the complexity of integer-pixel search has been greatly reduced by fast algorithms, and 2) reducing sub-pixel search points can greatly save the computation for sub-pixel interpolation. In this letter, a novel fast sub-pixel ME algorithm is proposed which performs a “rough” sub-pixel search before the partition selection, and performs a “precise” sub-pixel search for the best partition. By reducing the searching load for the large number of non-best partitions, the computation complexity for sub-pixel search can be greatly decreased. Experimental results show that our method can reduce the sub-pixel search points by more than 50% compared to existing fast sub-pixel ME methods with negligible quality degradation.

Wearable sensors for 3D upper limb motion modeling and ubiquitous estimation

Human motion capture technologies are widely used in interactive game and learning, animation, film special effects, health care, and navigation. Because of the agility, upper limb motion estimation is the most difficult problem in human motion capture. Traditional methods always assume that the movements of upper arm and forearm are independent and then estimate their movements separately; therefore, the estimated motion are always with serious distortion. In this paper, we propose a novel ubiquitous upper limb motion estimation method using wearable microsensors, which concentrates on modeling the relationship of the movements between upper arm and forearm. Exploration of the skeleton structure as a link structure with 5 degrees of freedom is firstly proposed to model human upper limb motion. After that, parameters are defined according to Denavit-Hartenberg convention, forward kinematic equations of upper limb are derived, and an unscented Kalman filter is invoked to estimate the defined parameters. The experimental results have shown the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed upper limb motion capture and analysis algorithm.

Quantitative study of cardiac motion estimation and abnormality classification in emission computed tomography

Quantitative description of cardiac motion is desirable to assist in detecting myocardial abnormalities from gated myocardial perfusion (GMP) emission computed tomography (ECT) images. While “optical flow” type of cardiac motion estimation (ME) techniques have been developed in the past, there has been no quantitative evaluation of their performance. Moreover, no investigation has been performed in terms of applying an ME technique to quantify cardiac motion abnormalities. Using the four-dimensional NCAT beating heart phantom with known built-in motion, the current work aimed at addressing the aforementioned two issues. A three-dimensional cardiac ME technique was developed to search for a motion vector field (MVF) that establishes voxel-by-voxel correspondence between two GMP ECT images. The weighted myocardial strain energy served as the constraint in the process to minimize the difference between one intensity image and the MVF warped other. We studied the convergence of the ME technique using different initial estimates and cost functions. The dependence of estimated MVF on the initialization was attributed to the tangential motion that is undetectable while not suppressed by the strain energy constraint. We optimized the strain energy constraint weighting using noise-free phantom images and noisy reconstructed images, the former against the known MVF and the later in the task of regional motion classification. While the results from the above two studies well coincide with each other, we also demonstrated that upon appropriate optimization the ME method has the capability of serving as a computer motion observer in separating simulated noisy reconstructed GMP SPECT images corresponding to hearts with and without regional motion abnormalities.

Monitoring Temperate Glacier Displacement by Multi-Temporal TerraSAR-X Images and Continuous GPS Measurements

A new generation of space-borne SAR sensors were launched in 2006-2007 with ALOS, TerraSAR-X, COSMO-Sky-Med and RadarSat-2 satellites. The data available in different bands (L, C and X bands), with High Resolution (HR) or multi-polarization modes offer new possibilities to monitor glacier displacement and surface evolution by SAR remote sensing. In this paper, the first results obtained with TerraSAR-X HR SAR image time series acquired over the temperate glaciers of the Chamonix Mont-Blanc test site are presented. This area involves well-known temperate glaciers which have been monitored and instrumented i.e. stakes for annual displacement/ablation, GPS for surface displacement and cavitometer for basal displacement, for more than 50 years. The potential of 11-day repeated X-band HR SAR data for Alpine glacier monitoring is investigated by a combined use of in situ measurements and multi-temporal images. Interpretations of HR images, analysis of interferometric pairs and performance assessments of target/texture tracking methods for glacier motion estimation are presented. The results obtained with four time series covering the Chamonix Mont-Blanc glaciers over one year show that the phase information is rarely preserved after 11 days on such glaciers, whereas the high resolution intensity information allows the main glacier features to be observed and displacement fields on the textured areas to be derived.

A review of motion estimation methods for non-invasive ultrasound motion and emerging strain imaging methods of carotid artery plaques

Non-invasive ultrasound imaging of carotid plaques is used in routine clinical evaluation of atherosclerosis and stroke. Strain imaging of the atherosclerotic plaques represents a very promising, emerging application of ultrasound imaging because it can assess plaque vulnerability without the risks of intervention. The promise of strain imaging includes the development of advanced diagnostic tools that can be used to predict plaque rupture. This review paper presents the fundamental assumptions and methods that can be used to extract motion estimates from ultrasound images. In terms of assumptions, both the constant and non-constant brightness models are presented. The most commonly used energy functionals are presented, along with both local and global solutions. Motion and strain imaging examples are also provided to demonstrate the methods. Our goal is that this review will facilitate the development of new, reliable strain imaging methods that can be used to assess the risk of plaque rupture.

Implementation of parallel integer motion estimation method by using reference blocks shared for HD video encoding

The redundant data in integer motion estimation (IME) come from the overlapping reference blocks of consecutive current macroblocks processing, and thus increase the requirement of memory bandwidth. In order to overcome these obstacles, we propose the SRBIME (Shared Reference Block Integer Motion Estimation) and implement. In the SRBIME, one reference block is shared for parallel current macroblocks processing in order to enhance data reusability and to reduce internal memory on IME design. Experimental results show that the proposed motion estimation design saves 95.9% of external memory bandwidth than Inter-Candidate data reuse scheme, 3% of gate count and 11.8% of local memory are saved compared with previous design while supporting higher encoding specification.

Image mosaic with relaxed motion

We propose a novel method to stitch images with relatively large roll or pitch called relaxed motion, which defies most existing mosaic algorithms. Our approach adopts a multi-resolution strategy, which combines the merits of both feature-based and intensity-based methods. The main contribution is a robust motion estimation procedure which integrates an adaptive multi-scale block matching algorithm called TV-BMA, a low contrast filter and a RANSAC motion rectification to jointly refine motion and feature matches. Based on TV − L1 model, the proposed TV-BMA works on the coarsest layer to find a robust initial displacement field as the initial motion for source images. This motion estimation method can generate robust correspondences for further processing. In the subsequent camera calibration step, we also present two stable methods to estimate the camera matrix. To estimate the focal length, we combine the golden section search and the simplex method based on the angle invariance of feature vectors; to estimate the rotation matrix, we introduce a subspace trust region method, which matches features based on the rotation invariance. Extensive experiments show that our approach leads to improved accuracy and robustness for stitching images with relaxed motion.

A Computation Control Motion Estimation Method for Complexity-Scalable Video Coding

In this paper, a new computation-control motion estimation (CCME) method is proposed which can perform motion estimation (ME) adaptively under different computation or power budgets while keeping high coding performance. We first propose a new class-based method to measure the macroblock (MB) importance where MBs are classified into different classes and their importance is measured by combining their class information as well as their initial matching cost information. Based on the new MB importance measure, a complete CCME framework is then proposed to allocate computation for ME. The proposed method performs ME in a one-pass flow. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can allocate computation more accurately than previous methods and, thus, has better performance under the same computation budget.

Nonrigid registration of dynamic medical imaging data using nD+t B-splines and a groupwise optimization approach

A registration method for motion estimation in dynamic medical imaging data is proposed. Registration is performed directly on the dynamic image, thus avoiding a bias towards a specifically chosen reference time point. Both spatial and temporal smoothness of the transformations are taken into account. Optionally, cyclic motion can be imposed, which can be useful for visualization (viewing the segmentation sequentially) or model building purposes. The method is based on a 3D (2D+time) or 4D (3D+time) free-form B-spline deformation model, a similarity metric that minimizes the intensity variances over time and constrained optimization using a stochastic gradient descent method with adaptive step size estimation. The method was quantitatively compared with existing registration techniques on synthetic data and 3D+t computed tomography data of the lungs. This showed subvoxel accuracy while delivering smooth transformations, and high consistency of the registration results. Furthermore, the accuracy of semi-automatic derivation of left ventricular volume curves from 3D+t computed tomography angiography data of the heart was evaluated. On average, the deviation from the curves derived from the manual annotations was approximately 3%. The potential of the method for other imaging modalities was shown on 2D+t ultrasound and 2D+t magnetic resonance images. The software is publicly available as an extension to the registration package elastix.

Capturing Village-level Heritages with a Hand-held Camera-Laser Fusion Sensor

In this paper, we present a hand-held fusion sensor system including calibration, motion estimation, and accumulated error reduction for 3D reconstruction. The proposed system consists of four cameras and two 2D laser scanners to obtain a wide field-of-view. The calibration method successfully achieves a much lower reprojection error compared to previous one. The motion estimation method provides very accurate and robust relative poses by fully utilizing plenty observations. At the last stage, the error reduction removes the drift occured over tens of thousands frames with weak GPS prior. Therefore the system is able to capture and geo-register very large heritage architectures spread over square kilometers area. Furthermore, because no assumption or restriction is made, the user can freely move the system and can control the level of detail of the e-heritage without any effort. To demonstrate the performance, we captured ‘Hahoe Village’ which is one of the most important folk materials of Korea. The experimental result shows that the estimated route fits Google's satellite image while the detailed appearances of representative constructions are captured and preserved well.

물리적 인간 기계 상호작용을 위한 근육의 기하학적 형상 변화를 이용한 상지부 움직임 예측

Estimation methods of motion intention from bio-signal present challenges in man machine interaction(MMI) to offer user's command to machine without control of any devices. Measurements of meaningful bio-signals that contain the motion intention and motion estimation methods from bio-signal are important issues for accurate and safe interaction. This paper proposes a novel motion estimation sensor based on a geometrical muscle changes, and a motion estimation method using the sensor. For estimation of the motion, we measure the circumference change of the muscle which is proportional to muscle activation level using a flexible piezoelectric cable (pMAS, piezo muscle activation sensor), designed in band type. The pMAS measures variations of the cable band that originate from circumference changes of muscle bundles. Moreover, we estimate the elbow motion by applying the sensor to upper limb with least square method. The proposed sensor and prediction method are simple to use so that they can be used to motion prediction device and methods in rehabilitation and sports fields.

Sampling strong tracking nonlinear unscented Kalman filter and its application in eye tracking

The unscented Kalman filter is a developed well-known method for nonlinear motion estimation and tracking. However, the standard unscented Kalman filter has the inherent drawbacks, such as numerical instability and much more time spent on calculation in practical applications. In this paper, we present a novel sampling strong tracking nonlinear unscented Kalman filter, aiming to overcome the difficulty in nonlinear eye tracking. In the above proposed filter, the simplified unscented transform sampling strategy with n + 2 sigma points leads to the computational efficiency, and suboptimal fading factor of strong tracking filtering is introduced to improve robustness and accuracy of eye tracking. Compared with the related unscented Kalman filter for eye tracking, the proposed filter has potential advantages in robustness, convergence speed, and tracking accuracy. The final experimental results show the validity of our method for eye tracking under realistic conditions.