Dynamic consistent correlation-variational approach for robust optical flow estimation

We present in this paper a novel combined scheme dedicated to the measurement of velocity in fluid experimental flows through image sequences. The proposed technique satisfies the Navier–Stokes equations and combines the robustness of correlation techniques with the high density of global variational methods. It can be considered either as a reenforcement of fluid dedicated opticalflow methods towards robustness, or as an enhancement of correlation approaches towards dense information. This results in a physics-based technique that is robust under noise and outliers, while providing a dense motion field. The method was applied on synthetic images and on real experiments in turbulent flows carried out to allow a thorough comparison with a state of the art variational and correlation methods.