In block motion estimation, search patterns with different shapes or sizes and the center-biased characteristics of motion-vector distribution have a large impact on the searching speed and quality of performance. We propose a novel algorithm using a cross-search pattern as the initial step and large/small diamond search (DS) patterns as the subsequent steps for fast block motion estimation. The initial cross-search pattern is designed to fit the cross-center-biased motion vector distribution characteristics of the real-world sequences by evaluating the nine relatively higher probable candidates located horizontally and vertically at the center of the search grid. The proposed cross-diamond search (CDS) algorithm employs the halfway-stop technique and finds small motion vectors with fewer search points than the DS algorithm while maintaining similar or even better search quality. The improvement of CDS over DS can be up to a 40% gain on speedup. Experimental results show that the CDS is much more robust, and provides faster searching speed and smaller distortions than other popular fast block-matching algorithms.

Remote imaging photoplethysmography (RIPPG) can achieve contactless monitoring of human vital signs. However, the robustness to a subject's motion is a challenging problem for RIPPG, especially in facial video-based RIPPG. The RIPPG signal originates from the radiant intensity variation of human skin with pulses of blood and motions can modulate the radiant intensity of the skin. Based on the optical properties of human skin, we build an optical RIPPG signal model in which the origins of the RIPPG signal and motion artifacts can be clearly described. The region of interest (ROI) of the skin is regarded as a Lambertian radiator and the effect of ROI tracking is analyzed from the perspective of radiometry. By considering a digital color camera as a simple spectrometer, we propose an adaptive color difference operation between the green and red channels to reduce motion artifacts. Based on the spectral characteristics of photoplethysmography signals, we propose an adaptive bandpass filter to remove residual motion artifacts of RIPPG. We also combine ROI selection on the subject's cheeks with speeded-up robust features points tracking to improve the RIPPG signal quality. Experimental results show that the proposed RIPPG can obtain greatly improved performance in accessing heart rates in moving subjects, compared with the state-of-the-art facial video-based RIPPG methods.