A fractional order total variation model for the estimation of optical flow

Abstract

In this paper, a fractional order total variation (TV) model is presented for estimating the optical flow in the image sequences. The proposed fractional order model is introduced by generalizing a variational flow model formed with a quadratic and a total variation terms. However, it is difficult to solve this generalized model due to the non-differentiability of the total variation regularization term. The Grunwald-Letnikov derivative is used to discretize the fractional order derivative. The resulting formulation is solved by using an efficient numerical algorithm. The experimental results verify that the proposed model yields a dense flow and preserves discontinuities in the flow field. Moreover, It also provides a significant robustness against outliers.