Estimating optical flow with cellular neural networks

The cellular neural network is a locally interconnected neural network capable of high-speed computation when implemented in analog VLSI. This work describes a CNN algorithm for estimating the optical flow from an image sequence. The algorithm is based on the spatio-temporal filtering approach to image motion analysis and is shown to estimate the optical flow more accurately than a comparable approach proposed previously. Two innovative features of the algorithm are the exploitation of a biological model for hyperacuity and the development of a new class of spatio-temporal filter better suited for image motion analysis than the commonly used space—time Gabor filter. ( 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.