Transparent-Motion Analysis

Abstract

A fundamental assumption made in formulating optical flow algorithms is that motion at any point in an image can be represented as a single pattern component undergoing a simple translation: even complex motion will ‘look like’ uniform displacement when viewed through a sufficiently small window. This assumption fails for a number of situations that commonly occur in real world images. For example, transparent surfaces moving past one another yield multiple motion components at a point. We propose an alternative formulation of the local motion assumption in which there may be two distinct patterns undergoing different motions within a given local analysis region. We then present an algorithm for the analysis of transparent motion.