A Nonlinear Approach to the Motion Correspondence Problem

Abstract

Changes in successive images from a time-varying image sequence of a scene can be characterized by velocity vector fields. In this paper the estimate of the velocity vector field is determined as a compromise in the attempt to satisfy the following two sets of constraints in addition to the regularization constraints: the optical flow constraints, which relate the values of the time-varying image function at corresponding points of the successive images of the sequence, and the directional smoothness constraints, which relate the values of the neighboring velocity vectors. To' achieve such a compromise, we introduce the system of nonlinear (equations of the unknown estimate of the velocity vector field. The optical flow and smoothness constraints are selectively suppressed in the neighborhoods of the occlusion boundaries. The last is accomplished by attaching a weight to each constraint. The spatial variations in the values of the time-varying image function near corresponding points of the successive images of the sequence, with the correspondence specified by a current estimate of tlhe velocity vector field, and variations in the current estimate of the velocity vectors themselves are implicitly used to adjust the weight function.