Measuring and Modeling Fluid Dynamic Processes using Digital Image Sequence Analysis

In this thesis novel motion models have been developed and incorporated into an extended parameter estimation framework that allows to accurately estimate the parameters and regularize them if needed. The performance of this framework has been increased to real time and implemented on inexpensive graphics hardware. Confidence and situation measures have been designed to discard inaccurate estimates. A phase field approach was developed to estimate piecewise smooth motion while detecting object boundaries at the same time. These algorithmic improvements have been successfully applied to three areas of fluid dynamics: air-sea interaction, microfluidics and plant physiology. At the ocean surface, the fluxes of heat and momentum have been measured with thermographic techniques, both spatially and temporally highly resolved. These measurement techniques present milestones for research in air-sea interaction, where point measurements and particle based laboratory measurements represent the state-of-the art. Calculations were done with two models, both making complement assumptions. Still, results derived from both models agree remarkably well. Measurements were conducted in laboratory settings as well as in the field. Microfluidic flow was measured with a new approach to molecular tagging velocimetry that explicitly models Taylor dispersion. This has lead to an increase in accuracy and applicability. Inaccuracies and problems of previous approaches due to Taylor dispersion were successfully evaded. Ground truth test measurements have been conducted, proving the accuracy of this novel technique. For the first time, flow velocities were measured in the xylem of plant leaves with active thermography. This represents a technique for measuring these flows on extended leaf areas on free standing plants, minimizing the impact caused by the measurement. Ground truth measurements on perfused leafs were performed. Measurements were also conducted on free standing plants in a climatic chamber, to measure xylem flows and relate flow velocities to environmental parameter. With a cuvette, environmental factors were varied locally. These measurements underlined the sensitivity of the new approach. A linear relationship in between flow rates and xylem diameter was found

Mixed OLS-TLS for the estimation of Dynamic Processes With a Linear Source Term

We present a novel technique to eliminate strong biases in parameter estimation were part of the data matrix is not corrupted by errors. Problems of this type occur in the simultaneous estimation of optical flow and the parameter of linear brightness change as well as in range flow estimation. For attaining highly accurate optical flow estimations under real world situations as required by a number of scientific applications, the standard brightness change constraint equation is violated. Very often the brightness change has to be modelled by a linear source term. In this problem as well as in range flow estimation, part of the data term consists of an exactly known constant. Total least squares (TLS) assumes the error in the data terms to be identically distributed, thus leading to strong biases in the equations at hand. The approach presented in this paper is based on a mixture of ordinary least squares (OLS) and total least squares, thus resolving the bias encountered in TLS alone. Apart from a thorough performance analysis of the novel estimator, a number of applications are presented

A variational approach to joint denoising, edge detection and motion estimation

The estimation of optical flow fields from image sequences is incorporated in a Mumford–Shah approach for image denoising and edge detection. Possibly noisy image sequences are considered as input and a piecewise smooth image intensity, a piecewise smooth motion field, and a joint discontinuity set are obtained as minimizers of the functional. The method simultaneously detects image edges and motion field discontinuities in a rigorous and robust way. It comes along with a natural multi–scale approximation that is closely related to the phase field approximation for edge detection by Ambrosio and Tortorelli. We present an implementation for 2D image sequences with finite elements in space and time. It leads to three linear systems of equations, which have to be iteratively in the minimization procedure. Numerical results underline the robustness of the presented approach and different applications are shown

2D-measurement technique for simultaneous quantitative determination of mixing ratio and velocity field in microfluidic applications

Two-dimensional Molecular-Tagging-Velocimetry (2D-MTV) has been used to investigate velocity fields of liquid flow in a micro mixer. Optical tagging was realized by using caged dye. For the first time patterns were generated by structured laser illumination using optical masks. This allows the generation of nearly any imaginable pattern. The flow induced deformation of the optically written pattern is tracked by imaging of laser induced fluorescence. Quantitative analysis of raw image series is carried out by novel “optical flow ” based techniques. A comparison to the standard technique of µPIV has also been conducted. Additionally Planar Spontaneous Raman Scattering (PSRS) was applied in order to determine concentration fields for mixtures of ethanol and water