Restoration and analysis of amateur movies from the Kennedy assassination

Conference · Tue Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1980

OSTI ID:5632507

Breedlove, J R; Cannon, T M; Janney, D H; Kruger, R P; Trussell, H J

Much of the evidence concerning the assassination of President Kennedy comes from amateur movies of the presidential motorcade. Two of the most revealing movies are those taken by the photographers Zapruder and Nix. Approximately 180 frames of the Zapruder film clearly show the general relation of persons in the presidential limousine. Many of the frames of interest were blurred by focus problems or by linear motion. The method of cepstral analysis was used to quantitatively measure the blur, followed by maximum a posteriori (MAP) restoration. Descriptions of these methods, complete with before-and-after examples from selected frames are given. The frames were then available for studies of facial expressions, hand motions, etc. Numerous allegations charge that multiple gunmen played a role in an assassination plot. Multispectral analyses, adapted from studies of satellite imagery, show no evidence of an alleged rifle in the Zapruder film. Lastly, frame-averaging is used to reduce the noise in the Nix movie prior to MAP restoration. The restoration of the reduced-noise average frame more clearly shows that at least one of the alleged gunmen is only the light-and-shadow pattern beneath the trees.

• Research Organization: Los Alamos Scientific Lab., NM (USA)
• DOE Contract Number: W-7405-ENG-36
• OSTI ID: 5632507
• Report Number(s): LA-UR-80-121; CONF-800310-1
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
990200* -- Mathematics & Computers
DATA PROCESSING
IMAGE PROCESSING
PHOTOGRAPHY
PROCESSING