Robust optical flow estimation using B-spline image models

We address the problem of robust estimation of the optical flow through a multiresolution energy minimization. Such process involves repeated evaluation of spatial and temporal gradients of image intensity which rely usually on bilinear interpolation and image filtering. We propose to base both computations on a single spline modelization of image intensity. We show empirically improvements in convergence speed and estimation error. Next, a spline pyramid model is used to implement the traditional coarse-to-fine estimation process, with improved results with respect to the usual Gaussian pyramid.