Perceiving Systems, Computer Vision

A framework for the robust estimation of optical flow

1993

Conference Paper

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Most approaches for estimating optical flow assume that, within a finite image region, only a single motion is present. This single motion assumption is violated in common situations involving transparency, depth discontinuities, independently moving objects, shadows, and specular reflections. To robustly estimate optical flow, the single motion assumption must be relaxed. This work describes a framework based on robust estimation that addresses violations of the brightness constancy and spatial smoothness assumptions caused by multiple motions. We show how the robust estimation framework can be applied to standard formulations of the optical flow problem thus reducing their sensitivity to violations of their underlying assumptions. The approach has been applied to three standard techniques for recovering optical flow: area-based regression, correlation, and regularization with motion discontinuities. This work focuses on the recovery of multiple parametric motion models within a region as well as the recovery of piecewise-smooth flow fields and provides examples with natural and synthetic image sequences.

Award: (Helmholtz Prize)
Author(s): Black, M. J. and Anandan, P.
Book Title: Fourth International Conf. on Computer Vision, ICCV-93
Pages: 231-236
Year: 1993
Month: May

Department(s): Perceiving Systems
Bibtex Type: Conference Paper (inproceedings)
Paper Type: Conference

Address: Berlin, Germany
Award Paper: Helmholtz Prize

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BibTex

@inproceedings{Black:ICCV:1993,
  title = {A framework for the robust estimation of optical flow},
  author = {Black, M. J. and Anandan, P.},
  booktitle = {Fourth International Conf. on Computer Vision, ICCV-93},
  pages = {231-236},
  address = {Berlin, Germany},
  month = may,
  year = {1993},
  doi = {},
  month_numeric = {5}
}