The Color Monogenic Signal: A new framework for color image processing. application to color optical flow

We use in this paper the formalism of Clifford algebras to define the so-called Color Monogenic Signal associated to a color image. It consists in a function with values in the Clifford algebra ¿_5,0 that codes color (RGB) and geometric structures information. Using geometric calculus, a notion of local color phase is introduced, generalizing the one for gray level image. As an example of application, a color optical flow robust against noise and brightness variation is provided. It extends the gray level CLG method to color images. The results we obtain on images from the Middleburry database show the relevance of the proposed approach.