Technique of Error Concealment for Block-Based Image Coding Using Genetic Algorithm

Since real world communication channels are not error free, the coded data transmitted on them may be corrupted, and block based image coding systems are vulnerable to transmission impairment. So the best neighborhood match method using genetic algorithm is used to conceal the error blocks. Experimental results show that the searching space can be greatly reduced by using genetic algorithm compared with exhaustive searching method, and good image quality is achieved. The peak signal noise ratios(PSNRs) of the restored images are increased greatly.

Error concealment in pixel based Wyner-Ziv video coding

In the Wyner-Ziv(WZ) video coding paradigm, a virtual correlation channel is assumed between the quantized source and the side information(SI) at the decoder, and channel coding is applied to achieve compression. In this paper, errors caused by the virtual correlation channel are addressed and an error concealment approach is proposed for pixel-based WZ video coding. In the approach, errors after decoding are classified into two types. Type 1 errors are caused by residual bit errors after channel decoding, while type 2 errors are due to low quality of SI in part of a frame which causes SI not lying within the quantization bin of a decoded quantized pixel value. Two separate strategies are respectively designed to detect and conceal the two types of errors. Simulations are carried out and results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Network-aware perceptual error concealment method for H.264 video with side information

In order to improve the video quality of transmission with data loss,a spatial and temporal error concealment method was proposed,which considered both the state information of the network and the perceptual weight of the video content.The proposed method dynamically changed the reliability weight of the neighboring macroblock,which was used to conceal the lost macroblocks according to the packet loss rate of the current channel state.The perceptual weight map was utilized as side information to do weighted pixel interpolation and side-match based motion compensation for spatial and temporal error concealment,respectively.And the perceptual weight of the neighboring macroblocks was adaptively modified according to the perceptual weight of the lost macroblocks.Compared with the method used in H.264 joint model,experiment results show that the proposed method performs well both in subjective video quality and objective video quality,and increases the average peak signal-to-noise ratio(PSNR) of the whole frame by about 0.4 dB when the video bitstreams are transmitted with packets loss.

Temporal Error Concealment Technique for MPEG-4 Video Streams

Concerning inter4v mode employed widely in MPEG-4 video, a new temporal error concealment scheme for MPEG-4 video sequences is proposed, which can selectively interpolate one or four motion vectors （MVs） for the missing macroblock （ MB ） according to the estimated MB coding mode. Performance of the proposed scheme is compared with the existing schemes with multiple testing sequences at different bit error rates. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can mask the impairments caused by transmission errors more efficiently than 0 MV and average MV methods by consuming more time for different bit error rates. It has an acceptable image quality close to that obtained by the selective motion vector matching （ SMVM ） algorithm, while taking less than half of cycles of operations. The proposed concealment scheme is suitable for low complexity video real-time implementations.

Temporal Shape Error Concealment for Video Objects

A novel temporal shape error concealment technique is proposed, which can he used in the context of object-based video coding schemes. In order to reduce the effect of the shape variations of a video object, the curvature scale space （CSS） technique is adopted to extract features, and then these features are used for boundary matching between the current frame and the previous frame. Because the temporal, spatial and sta- tistical video contour information are all considered, the proposed method can find the optimal matching, which is used to replace the damaged contours. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm achieves better subjective, objective qualities and higher efficiency than those previously developed methods.

A MODIFIED EDGE-ORIENTED SPATIAL INTERPOLATION ALGORITHM FOR CONSECUTIVE BLOCKS ERROR CONCEALMENT

This paper proposes a low-complexity spatial-domain Error Concealment (EC) algorithm for recovering consecutive blocks error in still images or Intra-coded (I) frames of video sequences. The proposed algorithm works with the following steps. Firstly the Sobel operator is performed on the top and bottom adjacent pixels to detect the most likely edge direction of current block area. After that one-Dimensional (1D) matching is used on the available block boundaries. Displacement between edge direction candidate and most likely edge direction is taken into consideration as an important factor to improve stability of 1D boundary matching. Then the corrupted pixels are recovered by linear weighting interpolation along the estimated edge direction. Finally the interpolated values are merged to get last recovered picture. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithms obtain good subjective quality and higher Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) than the methods in literatures for most images.

SPATIAL ERROR CONCEALMENT BASED ON MOJETTE TRANSFORM

This letter presents a novel spatial error concealment algorithm for the H.264 video coding. The error concealment algorithm is based on directional interpolation. Mojette transform is used to estimate the orientation features of the damaged blocks,and the image is interpolated in the appro-priate directions. The proposed method is compared with bilinear interpolation algorithm in the ref-erence implementation of H.264 and all directional interpolation. Experimental results prove that the proposed algorithm has better subjective and objective image reconstruction quality.

A NOVEL TEMPORAL ERROR CONCEALMENT METHOD BASED ON FUZZY REASONING FOR H.264

In this paper,a fuzzy reasoning based temporal error concealment method is proposed. The basic temporal error concealment is implemented by estimating Motion Vector (MV) of the lost MacroBlock (MB) from its neighboring MVs. Which MV is the most proper one is evaluated by some criteria. Generally,two criteria are widely used,namely Side Match Distortion (SMD) and Sum of Absolute Difference (SAD) of corresponding MV. However,each criterion could only partly describe the status of lost block. To accomplish the judgement more accurately,the two measures are considered together. Thus a refined measure based on fuzzy reasoning is adopted to balance the effects of SMD and SAD. Terms SMD and SAD are regarded as fuzzy input and the term ‘similarity’ as output to complete fuzzy reasoning. Result of fuzzy reasoning represents how the tested MV is similar to the original one. And k-means clustering technique is performed to define the membership function of input fuzzy sets adaptively. According to the experimental results,the concealment based on new measure achieves better performance.

Whole Frame Error Concealment with Refined Motion Extrapolation and Prescription at Encoder for H.264/AVC

Packet losses usually result in frame losses in low bit rate video streaming over error prone networks. The whole frame error concealment （EC） algorithm is then necessary for the decoder to improve the video quality. A refined bidirectional motion vector extrapolation was developed to improve the motion vector estimation precision by alleviating the effect of overlapped and hole regions with an adaptive overlapped block motion compensation to reduce block artifacts. A prescription-based framework was then developed to improve the error concealment at the encoder side. Simulations show that the EC algorithm at the decoder side outperforms the existing methods by 2-8 dB. Moreover, the prescription-based framework at the encoder side provides further peak signal to noise ratio improvement.

An Error Concealment Approach Based on H.263 Video Decoding in Pixel Domain

The video bit stream coded by H.263 recommendation is vulnerable to channel errors. For coded information, bit errors could result in error propagation, loss of synchronization and severe data loss. All of these will lead to the descent of image qualities in the end. In this paper, in order to solve this problem, we present a receiver based error concealment algorithm that uses information in pixel domain to detect errors and resynchronization, identify the location of the affected blocks and estimate erroneous data. The concealment algorithm is kept simple, no additional bit rate is required, and no modification is necessary to an existing encoder, so the real time decoding and concealment are possible. Computer emulation results show that the image quality after error concealment is significantly improved.

Edge-Oriented Spatial Interpolation for Error Concealment of Consecutive Blocks

This paper proposes a low-complexity spatial-domain error concealment （EC） algorithm for recovering consecutive blocks error in still images or intra-coded （I） frames of video sequences. The proposed algorithm works with the following steps. Firstly the Sobel operator is performed on the top and bottom adjacent pixels to detect the most probable edge direction of current block area. After that one-dimensional （1-D） matching is used on the available block boundaries. Displacement between edge direction candidate and most probable edge direction is taken into consideration as an important factor to improve stability of 1-D boundary matching. Then the corrupted pixels are recovered by linear weighting interpolation along the estimated edge direction. Finally the interpolated values are merged to get last recovered picture. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithms obtain good subjective quality and higher PSNR than the methods in literatures for most images.

Robust spatio-temporal error concealment for packet- lossy H.264 video transmission

In this article, a spatio-temporal post-processing error concealment algorithm designed initially for a H.264 video-streaming scheme over packet-lossy networks has been presented. It aims at optimizing subjective quality of restored video and the conventional objective metric, peak signal-to-noise ratio （PSNR）, as well, under the constraints of low delay and computational complexity, which are critical to real-time applications and portable devices having limited resources. Specifically, it takes into consideration physical property of motion to achieve more meaningful perceptual video quality. Further, a content-adaptive bilinear spatial interpolation approach and a temporal error concealment approach are combined under a unified boundary match criterion based on texture and motion activity analysis. Extensive experiments have demonstrated that the proposal not only result in better reconstruction, objectively and subjectively, than the reference software model benchmark, but also results in better robustness to different video sequences.

A Novel Frame Error Concealment Scheme Based on Gain Control for TCX Audio Codec

A novel frame error concealment scheme is proposed to improve the decoded audio quality of the receiver for transform coded excitation（TCX）audio codec.This scheme,which is a gain control approach based on the stability of linear predictive coding（LPC）filter,predicts the lost frames by utilizing the linear spectrum frequency and different continuous attenuation factor of different kinds of lost frames.Signal noise ratio（SNR）test and multiple stimuli with hidden reference and anchor（MUSHRA）test are conducted to evaluate the performance of this approach in adaptive multi-rate wideband plus（AMR-WB＋）audio codec.Compared with the original frame error concealment scheme,our scheme achieves better audio recovery quality in AMR-WB＋audio codec.

Low-Complexity Error-Control Methods for Scalable Video Streaming

In this paper, low-complexity error-resilience and error-concealment methods for the scalable video coding （SVC） extension of H.264/AVC are described. At the encoder, multiple-description coding （MDC） is used as error-resilient coding. Balanced scalable multiple descriptions are generated by mixing the pre-encoded scalable bit streams. Each description is wholly decodable using a standard SVC decoder. A preprocessor can be placed before an SVC decoder to extract the packets from the highest-quality bit stream. At the decoder, error concealment involves using a lightweight decoder preprocessor to generate a valid bit stream from the available network abstraction layer （NAL） units when medium-grain scalability （MGS） layers are used. Modifications are made to the NAL unit header or slice header if some NAL units of MGS layers are lost. The number of additional packets that a decoder discards as a result of a packet loss is minimized. The proposed error-resilience and error-concealment methods require little computation, which makes them suitable for real-time video streaming. Experiment results show that the proposed methods significantly reduce quality degradation caused by packet loss.

Multi-Level Error Detection and Concealment Algorithm to Improve Speech Quality in GSM Full Rate Speech Codecs

Digital mobile telecommunication systems, such as the global system for mobile （GSM） system, want to further improve speech communication quality without changing the channel encoders and decoders. Speech quality is most affected by residual bit errors in received speech frames. Conventional methods use binary decision strategies for error detection and concealment in frames. This paper presents a multi-level error detection and concealment algorithm for GSM full rate speech codec systems. The algorithm uses multi-source knowledge to detect and conceal speech frame errors at the frame, parameter, and even bit levels. Tests show that most corrupted frames can be appropriately concealed by this algorithm, resulting in MOS gains of more than 50% for real-world data tests.

MOTION VECTOR RECOVERY METHOD BASED ON MEAN SHIFT PROCEDURE

This letter presents a novel Motion Vector (MV) recovery method which is based on Mean Shift (MS) procedure. According to motion continuity, MVs in local area should be similar. If projecting MV into 2-D feature space, local MVs in the feature space tend to cluster closely. To estimate the lost MVs in local area, recovery of lost MVs is modeled as clustering operation. MS procedure is applied to enforce each lost MV in the feature space to shift to the position where dominant MVs are gathered. Meanwhile, bandwidth estimation is statistically characterized by the variation of local standard de-viations; weighted value calculation is determined by estimation of overall standard deviation. Simu-lation results demonstrate their better performance when compared with other MV recovery ap-proaches and low computation cost.

Error detection based on MB types

This paper proposes a method of error detection based on macroblock （MB） types for video transmission. For decoded inter MBs, the absolute values of received residues are accumulated. At the same time, the intra textural complexity of the current MB is estimated by that of the motion compensated reference block. We compare the inter residue with the intra textural complexity. If the inter residue is larger than the intra textural complexity by a predefined threshold, the MB is considered to be erroneous and errors are concealed. For decoded intra MBs, the connective smoothness of the current MB with neighboring MBs is tested to find erroneous MBs. Simulation results show that the new method can remove those seriously-corrupted MBs efficiently. Combined with error concealment, the new method improves the recovered quality at the decoder by about 0.5--1 dB.