SYSTEM AND METHOD OF REAL TIME INSERTIONS INTO VIDEO USING ADAPTIVE OCCLUSION WITH A SYNTHETIC REFERENCE IMAGE

A system and method for realtime occlusion processing for seamlessly and realistically blending an inserted image such as an advertisement into a region of a live broadcast image without obscuring the action of the live image. The average color and intensity of a synthetic reference image containing at least some of the region to be replaced is compared to the average color and intensity of the current live broadcast image to determine the difference between the two images. The resulting difference image obtained from processing the current image and synthetic, reference image determines areas of the intended insertion region within the current image which are obscured by live action. The processor then generates an occlusion mask based on the difference image and only those pixels that are unoccluded within the intended insertion region are allowed to be inserted into the live broadcast.