Tracking of deformable surfaces in multiview image sequence coding

This paper describes a procedure for 3D model-based flexible motion estimation using information from all channels of a multiview image sequence. The 3D model is initialised by accurate adaptation of a 2D wireframe model to the foreground object of one of the views. The rigid 3D motion is estimated for each triangle and spatial homogeneity neighbourhood constraints are used to improve the reliability of the estimation efficiency and to smooth the motion field produced. A novel technique is used to estimate flexible motion of the nodes of the wireframe from the rigid 3D motion vectors of the wireframe triangle and flexible deformation of each node of the wireframe. The performance of the resulting 3D flexible motion estimation method is evaluated experimentally.