A robust stochastic filter for point tracking in image sequences

International audienceThe approach we investigate for point tracking combines within a stochastic filtering framework a dynamic model relying on the optical flow constraint and measurements provided by a matching technique. Focusing on points belonging to regions described by a global dominant motion, the proposed tracking system is linear. Since we focus on the case where the system depends on the images, the tracker is built from a Conditional Linear Filter, derived through the use of a conditional linear minimum variance estimator. This conditional tracker authorizes to significantly improve results in some general situation. In particular, such an approach allows us to deal in a simple way with the tracking of points following trajectories with abrupt changes and occlusions