A PDE model for computing the optimal flow

Abstract

In this paper we present a new model for optical ow calculation using a variational formulation which preserves discontinuities of the ow much better than classical methods. We study the Euler-Lagrange equations asociated to the variational problema. In the case of quadratic energy, we show the existence and uniqueness of the corresponding evolution problema. Since our method avoid linearization in the optical ow constraint, it can recover large displacement in the scene. We avoid convergence to irrelevant local minima by embedding our method into a linear scale-space framework and using a focusing strategy from coarse to fine scales.