Layered representation for motion analysis

Standard approaches to motion analysis assume that the optic flow is smooth; such techniques have trouble dealing with occlusion boundaries. The image sequence can be decomposed into a set of overlapping layers, where each layer's motion is described by a smooth flow field. The discontinuities in the description are then attributed to object opacities rather than to the flow itself, mirroring the structure of the scene. A set of techniques is devised for segmenting images into coherently moving regions using affine motion analysis and clustering techniques. It is possible to decompose an image into a set of layers along with information about occlusion and depth ordering. The techniques are applied to a flower garden sequence. The scene can be analyzed into four layers, and, the entire 30-frame sequence can be represented with a single image of each layer, along with associated motion parameters.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">></ETX>