FPGA-based architecture for real time segmentation and denoising of HD video

The identification of moving objects is a basic step in computer vision. The identification begins with the segmentation and is followed by a denoising phase. This paper proposes the FPGA hardware implementation of segmentation and denoising unit. The segmentation is conducted using the Gaussian mixture model (GMM), a probabilistic method for the segmentation of the background. The denoising is conducted implementing the morphological operators of erosion, dilation, opening and closing. The proposed circuit is optimized to perform real time processing of HD video sequences (1,920 x 1,080 @ 20 fps) when implemented on FPGA devices. The circuit uses an optimized fixed width representation of the data and implements high performance arithmetic circuits. The circuit is implemented on Xilinx and Altera FPGA. Implemented on xc5vlx50 Virtex5 FPGA, it can process 24 fps of an HD video using 1,179 Slice LUTs and 291 Slice Registers; the dynamic power dissipation is 0.46 mW/MHz. Implemented on EP2S15F484C3 StratixII, it provides a maximum working frequency of 44.03 MHz employing 5038 Logic Elements and 7,957 flip flop with a dynamic power dissipation of 4.03 mW/MHz.