An Optical Flow Estimation Algorithm Using the Spatio-Temporal Hierarchical Structure

Shin Hwan HWANG  Sang Uk LEE  

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information and Systems   Vol.E76-D   No.4   pp.507-515
Publication Date: 1993/04/25
Online ISSN: 
DOI: 
Print ISSN: 0916-8532
Type of Manuscript: Special Section LETTER (Special Issue on Image Processing and Understanding)
Category: 
Keyword: 
optical flow,  hierarchical structure,  multigrid,  spatio-temporal,  

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Summary: 
In this letter, we propose an algorithm to estimate the optical flow fields based on a hierarchical structure composed of spatio-temporal image pyramids obtained from repetitive application of the Gaussian filtering and decimation in both the spatial and temporal domain. In our approach, an inter-level motion smoothness constraint between adjacent pyramid levels is introduced to estimate a unique optical flow field. We show that the pyramid structure allows us to employ the multigrid algorithm, which is known to accelerate the convergence rate. The multigrid algorithm provides a scheme for efficient combination of local and global information to estimate the optical flow field. The experimental results reveal that the combination of local and global information yields a fast convergence behavior and accurate motion estimation results.