METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR FAST BLOCK MOTION DETECTION

A method, system, and/or apparatus for quickly detecting blocks or regions in an image whose pixels that can be coded efficiently by a pointer to the same block occurring in a reference image. The reference image is shared between an encoder and a corresponding decoder. One embodiment of the encoder quickly detects such blocks in an image by: (a) defining features such that substantially fewer features occur in an image than pixels, (b) correlating features in an image to a corresponding feature in the reference image, (c) estimating a displacement vector representative of the displacement of the correlated features, (d) estimating a seed point within the displaced block from which to grow the block, and (e) growing the displaced block to determine its size, shape, and/or dimensions.