Heuristic Algorithms of Coincidence for the Estimation of Movements in Compression of Images

The NP-Completeness theory states that exact and efficient algorithms are unlikely to exist for the class of NP-difficult problems. One way to deal with NP hardness is to relax the optimality requirement and look for solutions instead that are close to the optimum. This is the main idea behind the approximation algorithms, which are called heuristic or metaheuristic. The problem of motion estimation is a process with a high degree of computational complexity, it requires sufficient memory space and execution time. It represents the cost of static, dynamic and video image sequence coding. The main task is to minimize the distortion rate and improve visual quality. This makes research in the field of coding, image compression and video focus on finding efficient algorithms to carry out the estimation of movement in a reasonable time. If a list of images of n elements is analyzed, there are feasible solutions. So, an exhaustive search is too slow, even for small values of the solution space. Therefore, from a practical point of view, it is crucial to have efficient and fast heuristic algorithms that avoid thorough search. In this investigation we design and implement heuristic algorithms, based on the frequency domain, which are applied on the coefficients of the discrete transform of the cosine and wavelets. Also, we propose temporal domain algorithms such as block-matching algorithms, which focus your search on the maximum coincidence of the current image with the reference one. The algorithms used during the implementation of this research work were written with the mathematical programming language MATLAB. In addition, we review the basic concepts of image processing, video, compression algorithms and motion estimation frequently used. The evaluation of the algorithms was carried out with a set of images provided by a previous acquisition system. We show the improvement of visual quality, the amount of compressed or reconstructed information and the behavior of the methods in the search for similarities between pixels or images. Finally, we contribute to the dissemination of new lines of scientific research that lead to the expansion and improvement of the study, the generation of new knowledge, since it is a young area within the Education discipline of Nicaragua.