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Why we need a coarse-to-fine strategy to solve the optical flow problem (feature tracking) in practice?


Why we need a coarse-to-fine strategy to solve the optical flow problem (feature tracking) in practice? If we do not use such kind of methods, what will happen?


Solution

  • If an image has larger motions, then the traditional Optical Flow methods like the non-iterative Lucas Kanade can perform badly because they assume motion is small (subpixel). The coarse-to-fine method helps a lot because in a coarser resolution you can assume that the brightness constancy can hold.