A method and a device for motion estimated and compensated Field Rate Up-conversion (FRU) for video applications is disclosed and claimed. The invention provides for dividing an
image field to be interpolated into a plurality of image blocks, where each image block includes a respective set of image elements of the
image field. In one embodiment, for each image block of a subset of image blocks, a group of neighboring image blocks is selected. A
motion vector for the image block is estimated that describes the movement of the image block from a previous
image field to a current image field on the basis of predictor motion vectors associated to the group of neighboring image blocks. Each image element of the image block is determined by interpolation of two corresponding image elements in the previous and current image fields related by the estimated
motion vector. To estimate a
motion vector, the invention provides for applying each of the predictor motion vectors to the image block to determine a respective pair of corresponding image blocks in the previous and current image fields. For each of the pairs of corresponding image blocks, an
error function which is the Sum of luminance
Absolute Difference (SAD) between corresponding image elements in the pair of corresponding image blocks is evaluated. For each pair of the predictor motion vectors, a degree of homogeneity is also evaluated, followed by the application of a
fuzzy rule having an activation level that is proportional to the degree of homogeneity of the pair of predictor motion vectors and the error functions of the pair of predictor motion vectors. An optimum
fuzzy rule having the highest activation level is selected, from which the best predictor motion vector is determined, having the smaller
error function of the pair associated to the optimum
fuzzy rule. In most cases, the motion vector for the image block is estimated on the basis of the best predictor motion vector.