Multi-objective optimization for characterization of optical flow methods

Optical flow methods are among the most accurate techniques for estimating displacement and velocity fields in a number of applications that range from neuroscience to robotics. The performance of any optical flow method will naturally depend on the configuration of its parameters. Beyond the standard practice of manual (ad-hoc) selection of parameters for a specific application, in this article we propose a framework for automatic parameter setting that allows searching for an approximated Pareto-optimal set of configurations in the whole parameter space. This final Pareto front characterizes each specific method, enabling proper method comparison. We define two performance criteria, namely the accuracy and speed of the optical flow methods.