A discontinuity-preserving optical flow algorithm

Horn and Schunk´s approach is a very classical optical flow algorithm. This paper investigates a modification of Horn and Schunk´s approach which leads to a better preservation of flow discontinuities. It improves Horn-Schunk model in three aspects: (i) It replaces the smooth weight coefficient in the energy equation by variable weight coefficient, (ii) It adopts a new method to compute the velocity mean. The new method reflects the effect of the intensity difference on the image velocity diffusion, (iii) It introduces a more efficient iterative method than the Gauss-Seidel method to solve the associated Euler-Lagrange equation. The experiment results have validated the better effect of the improved method on discontinuities preserving