Kazutake Uehira

Super high resolution motion image input technique

A motion image acquisition technique that enhances resolution by combining periodic position-shifting of the CCD sensor with motion adaptive processing is described. The technique is applied in a prototype system that employs an HDTV CCD sensor that is shifted alternately by half a pixel pitch in the horizontal and vertical directions in synchrony with the frame frequency. The series of four frame images so obtained is integrated into one image as an output frame image for each frame. The resolution is enhanced by this integration, but this technique is not effective for moving regions because of image lag. Therefore, moving regions are reproduced by using only the latest frame image. Still and moving regions are synthesized using the movement coefficient derived from the frame difference signal over the past four frames. The resolution of the moving region is half that of the still region. However, this difference in resolution cannot be perceived clearly because the resolving power of the human eye is low for a moving region. An evaluation of the prototype system confirmed that this technique enhances the resolution in both the vertical and horizontal directions, and that high-quality images far superior to HDTV can be output.