Majority selection de-interlacing : an advanced motion-compensated spatio-temporal interpolation technique for interlaced video

De-interlacing of interlaced video doubles the number of lines per picture. As the video signal is sub-Nyquist sampled in the vertical and temporal dimension, standard up-conversion or interpolation filters cannot be applied. This may explain the large number of de-interlacing algorithms that have been proposed in the literature, ranging from simple intra-field de-interlacing methods to the advanced motion-compensated (MC) methods. MC de-interlacing methods are generally far superior over the non-MC ones. However, it seems difficult to combine robustness of a MC de-interlacing algorithm for incorrect motion vectors with the ability to preserve high spatial frequencies. The Majority-Selection de-interlacer, as proposed in this paper, provides a means to combine several strengths of individual de-interlacing algorithms into a single output signal.