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 optical-flow 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.