Application of deinterlacing for the enhancement of surveillance video

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2001.Includes bibliographical references (p. 91-93).As the cost of video technology has fallen, surveillance cameras have become an integral part of a vast number of security systems. However, even with the introduction of progressive video displays, the majority of these systems still use interlaced scanning so that they may be connected to standard television monitors. When law enforcement officials analyze surveillance video, they are often interested in carefully examining a few frames of interest. However, it is impossible to perform frame-by-frame analysis of interlaced surveillance video without performing interlaced to progressive conversion, also known as deinterlacing. In most surveillance systems, very basic techniques are used for deinterlacing, resulting in a number of severe visual artifacts and greatly limiting the intelligibility of surveillance video. This thesis investigates fourteen deinterlacing algorithms to determine methods that will improve the quality and intelligibility of video sequences acquired by surveillance systems. The advantages and disadvantages of each algorithm are discussed followed by both qualitative and quantitative comparisons. Motion adaptive deinterlacing methods are shown to have the most potential for surveillance video, demonstrating the highest performance both visually and in terms of peak signal-to-noise ratio.by Brian A. HEng.S.M