In binocular stereo, the objective is to establish the matching of a pair of
images. In the motion case, the objective is to compute the displacement field
from consecutive images of a moving scene. Optical flow is an approximation
of small inter-frame displacement. Two methods have been developed.
The first method is based on multiple image attributes and is among the first
algorithms which can deal with large image disparities and compute dense 3-D
depth maps. The second method is based on the windowed Fourier phase (WFP).
The WFP is quasi-linear and spatially dense, with spatial period
and slope controlled by the selected analysis frequency. The WFP
includes the zero-crossings and the peaks as special cases, but it contains
much more information essential for stable matching. Theoretically, the
WFP is complete in representing the signals up to a multiplicative constant.
The implementation of the matching algorithm resembles that of a neural
network and is well suited for commercially available parallel frame-rate
hardware. Experiments have achieved good results with random-dot images
and natural images, used either as stereograms or as consecutive views of a
moving scene.
J. Weng, ``Image matching using the windowed Fourier phase,''
International Journal of Computer Vision, vol. 11, no. 3, pp.
211-236, 1993. Download PDF.
J. Weng, ``Windowed Fourier phase: completeness and signal
reconstruction,'' IEEE Transactions on Signal
Processing, vol. 41. no. 2,
Feb. 1993, pp. 657-666.
J. Weng, N. Ahuja, and T. S. Huang, ``Matching two perspective views,''
IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence,
vol. 14, no. 8. pp. 806-825, Aug. 1992.
J. Weng, T. S. Huang, and N. Ahuja, Motion and Structure from Image
Sequences, Springer-Verlag, 1993.
J. Weng and T. S. Huang, ``3-D Motion Analysis from Image
Sequences Using Point Correspondences,'' in C. H. Chen, L. F. Pau and
P. S. Wang (eds.), Handbook of Pattern Recognition and Computer
Vision, World Scientific Publishing, 1993.
To Weng's Home Page: http://web.cps.msu.edu/~weng/