A parallel algorithm for real-time computation of optical flow.
The precise management of two-dimensional field of velocities from time-varying two-dimensional images is impossible in general. It is, however, possible to compute suitable 'optical flows' that are qualitatively similar to the velocity field in most cases. We describe a simple, parallel algorithm that computes an optical flow from sequences of real images, which is consistent with human psychophysics and suggests plausible physiological models. In particular, our algorithm runs on a Connection Machine supercomputer in close-to-real time. It shows several of the same 'illusions' that are perceived by humans. A natural physiological implementation of the model is consistent with data from cortical areas V1 and MT.
Bülthoff
H
H
Center for Biological Information Processing, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139.
Little
J
J
Poggio
T
T
D000465:Algorithms; D000818:Animals; D003199:Computer Systems; D006801:Humans; D008960:Models, Psychological; D009039:Motion Perception / Q000502:physiology; D055095:Optics and Photonics / Q000295:instrumentation; D011601:Psychophysics; D012371:Robotics; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000502:physiology