Real-time video enhancement for high quality videoconferencing

In this paper we present a novel method for high quality real-time video enhancement; it improves the sharpness and the contrast of video streams, and simultaneously suppresses noise. The method is comprised of three main modules: (1) noise analysis, (2) spatial processing, based on a new multi-scale pseudo-bilateral filter, and (3) temporal processing that includes robust motion detection and recursive temporal noise filtering. To achieve video frame rates for HD signals used in high-end telepresence systems such as the HP Halo room, we employ the computational capacity of modern graphics cards (GPUs), and distribute the tasks of analysis and of processing between CPU and GPU. The proposed scheme allows achieving video quality which is comparable with high-end camera systems, while using much lower cost cameras and reducing channel bandwidth requirements.