A parallel algorithm for 3D particle tracking and Lagrangian trajectory reconstruction

Particle-tracking methods are widely used in fluid mechanics and multi-target tracking research because of their unique ability to reconstruct long trajectories with high spatial and temporal resolution. Researchers have recently demonstrated 3D tracking of several objects in real time, but as the number of objects is increased, real-time tracking becomes impossible due to data transfer and processing bottlenecks. This problem may be solved by using parallel processing. In this paper, a parallel-processing framework has been developed based on frame decomposition and is programmed using the asynchronous object-oriented Charm++ paradigm. This framework can be a key step in achieving a scalable Lagrangian measurement system for particle-tracking velocimetry and may lead to real-time measurement capabilities. The parallel tracking algorithm was evaluated with three data sets including the particle image velocimetry standard 3D images data set #352, a uniform data set for optimal parallel performance and a computational-fluid-dynamics-generated non-uniform data set to test trajectory reconstruction accuracy, consistency with the sequential version and scalability to more than 500 processors. The algorithm showed strong scaling up to 512 processors and no inherent limits of scalability were seen. Ultimately, up to a 200-fold speedup is observed compared to the serial algorithm when 256 processors were used. The parallel algorithm is adaptable and could be easily modified to use any sequential tracking algorithm, which inputs frames of 3D particle location data and outputs particle trajectories.