Using stability of interpretation as verification for low level processing: An example from egomotion and optic flow

A method is presented for validating low level optic flow computations in an image sequence by a simple analysis of the stability of the three-dimensional interpretation of the scene. Given computed optic flow and known egomotion, a viewer centered depth image is computed. By warping a finite history of previous depth images to the current viewer-centered system, the stability of the depth estimate at each point is analysed. Regions of low stability indicate image regions where the low level optic flow computation is unreliable. It is proposed that this approach is an example of performing verification mode vision, i.e., simple low-level computations are adequate when the interpretation provided is consistent with respect to the current scene interpretation