Video Interpolation using Optical Flow and Laplacian Smoothness

Non-rigid video interpolation is a common computer vision task. In this paper we present an optical flow approach which adopts a Laplacian Cotangent Mesh constraint to enhance the local smoothness. Similar to Li et al., our approach adopts a mesh to the image with a resolution up to one vertex per pixel and uses angle constraints to ensure sensible local deformations between image pairs. The Laplacian Mesh constraints are expressed wholly inside the optical flow optimization, and can be applied in a straightforward manner to a wide range of image tracking and registration problems. We evaluate our approach by testing on several benchmark datasets, including the Middlebury and Garg et al. datasets. In addition, we show application of our method for constructing 3D Morphable Facial Models from dynamic 3D data

An Efficient Algorithm for Video Super-Resolution Based On a Sequential Model

In this work, we propose a novel procedure for video super-resolution, that is the recovery of a sequence of high-resolution images from its low-resolution counterpart. Our approach is based on a "sequential" model (i.e., each high-resolution frame is supposed to be a displaced version of the preceding one) and considers the use of sparsity-enforcing priors. Both the recovery of the high-resolution images and the motion fields relating them is tackled. This leads to a large-dimensional, non-convex and non-smooth problem. We propose an algorithmic framework to address the latter. Our approach relies on fast gradient evaluation methods and modern optimization techniques for non-differentiable/non-convex problems. Unlike some other previous works, we show that there exists a provably-convergent method with a complexity linear in the problem dimensions. We assess the proposed optimization method on {several video benchmarks and emphasize its good performance with respect to the state of the art.}Comment: 37 pages, SIAM Journal on Imaging Sciences, 201

Multi-Scale 3D Scene Flow from Binocular Stereo Sequences

Scene flow methods estimate the three-dimensional motion field for points in the world, using multi-camera video data. Such methods combine multi-view reconstruction with motion estimation. This paper describes an alternative formulation for dense scene flow estimation that provides reliable results using only two cameras by fusing stereo and optical flow estimation into a single coherent framework. Internally, the proposed algorithm generates probability distributions for optical flow and disparity. Taking into account the uncertainty in the intermediate stages allows for more reliable estimation of the 3D scene flow than previous methods allow. To handle the aperture problems inherent in the estimation of optical flow and disparity, a multi-scale method along with a novel region-based technique is used within a regularized solution. This combined approach both preserves discontinuities and prevents over-regularization – two problems commonly associated with the basic multi-scale approaches. Experiments with synthetic and real test data demonstrate the strength of the proposed approach.National Science Foundation (CNS-0202067, IIS-0208876); Office of Naval Research (N00014-03-1-0108

Wavelet based stereo images reconstruction using depth images

It is believed by many that three-dimensional (3D) television will be the next logical development toward a more natural and vivid home entertaiment experience. While classical 3D approach requires the transmission of two video streams, one for each view, 3D TV systems based on depth image rendering (DIBR) require a single stream of monoscopic images and a second stream of associated images usually termed depth images or depth maps, that contain per-pixel depth information. Depth map is a two-dimensional function that contains information about distance from camera to a certain point of the object as a function of the image coordinates. By using this depth information and the original image it is possible to reconstruct a virtual image of a nearby viewpoint by projecting the pixels of available image to their locations in 3D space and finding their position in the desired view plane. One of the most significant advantages of the DIBR is that depth maps can be coded more efficiently than two streams corresponding to left and right view of the scene, thereby reducing the bandwidth required for transmission, which makes it possible to reuse existing transmission channels for the transmission of 3D TV. This technique can also be applied for other 3D technologies such as multimedia systems. In this paper we propose an advanced wavelet domain scheme for the reconstruction of stereoscopic images, which solves some of the shortcommings of the existing methods discussed above. We perform the wavelet transform of both the luminance and depth images in order to obtain significant geometric features, which enable more sensible reconstruction of the virtual view. Motion estimation employed in our approach uses Markov random field smoothness prior for regularization of the estimated motion field. The evaluation of the proposed reconstruction method is done on two video sequences which are typically used for comparison of stereo reconstruction algorithms. The results demonstrate advantages of the proposed approach with respect to the state-of-the-art methods, in terms of both objective and subjective performance measures

Estimation of vector fields in unconstrained and inequality constrained variational problems for segmentation and registration

Vector fields arise in many problems of computer vision, particularly in non-rigid registration. In this paper, we develop coupled partial differential equations (PDEs) to estimate vector fields that define the deformation between objects, and the contour or surface that defines the segmentation of the objects as well.We also explore the utility of inequality constraints applied to variational problems in vision such as estimation of deformation fields in non-rigid registration and tracking. To solve inequality constrained vector field estimation problems, we apply tools from the Kuhn-Tucker theorem in optimization theory. Our technique differs from recently popular joint segmentation and registration algorithms, particularly in its coupled set of PDEs derived from the same set of energy terms for registration and segmentation. We present both the theory and results that demonstrate our approach