Correlation estimation from compressed images

This paper addresses the problem of correlation estimation in sets of compressed images. We consider a framework where the images are represented under the form of linear measurements due to low complexity sensing or security requirements. We assume that the images are correlated through the displacement of visual objects due to motion or viewpoint change and the correlation is effectively represented by optical flow or motion field models. The correlation is estimated in the compressed domain by jointly processing the linear measurements. We first show that the correlated images can be efficiently related using a linear operator. Using this linear relationship we then describe the dependencies between images in the compressed domain. We further cast a regularized optimization problem where the correlation is estimated in order to satisfy both data consistency and motion smoothness objectives with a Graph Cut algorithm. We analyze in detail the correlation estimation performance and quantify the penalty due to image compression. Extensive experiments in stereo and video imaging applications show that our novel solution stays competitive with methods that implement complex image reconstruction steps prior to correlation estimation. We finally use the estimated correlation in a novel joint image reconstruction scheme that is based on an optimization problem with sparsity priors on the reconstructed images. Additional experiments show that our correlation estimation algorithm leads to an effective reconstruction of pairs of images in distributed image coding schemes that outperform independent reconstruction algorithms by 2–4 dB.