Refinement of Optical Flow Method and its Evaluation

It can be expected from the recent developments of high-speed video camera that novel image analysis methods would be devised by utilizing its advantages over conventional video cameras. The most advantageous feature of a high-speed video camera is of course its improved time resolution. In this paper, a new PIV method that uses more than two consecutive images is proposed in order to improve the measurement accuracy under uniform and shearing flow conditions. The use of a few consecutive images with a small time separation is possible only when a high-speed camera is available. The accuracy of the proposed method based on the optical flow technique was evaluated by means of a synthetic particle image simulation.