Technique for two-dimensional displacement field determination using a reliability-guided spatial-gradient-based digital image correlation algorithm

This paper proposed a novel in-plane displacement field measurement algorithm using an optical flow strategy. We built a linear illumination model between images before and after deformation to guarantee intensity invariability. We used image upsampling and a reliability-guided strategy to find the matching points accurate to 0.5 pixels in the reference and deformed images. The criterion to determine the reliability is zero-mean normalized cross-correlation coefficient. Afterward, we used the brightness constancy constraint combined with Lucas-Kanade optical flow constraint in a specific image region to obtain an overdetermined linear equation. We applied the noniterative least-squares algorithm to solve the equations and to achieve the displacement offsets. This research utilized multithread calculation to handle the complete cracking applications. We estimated the computing efficiency and calculation precision of the proposed method through a series of experimental speckle patterns. All results demonstrated the correctness, effectiveness, and robustness of the proposed method. (C) 2018 Optical Society of America