Fusion of physically-based registration and deformation modeling for nonrigid motion analysis

In our previous work, we used finite element models to determine nonrigid motion parameters and recover unknown local properties of objects given correspondence data recovered with snakes or other tracking models. In this paper, we present a novel multiscale approach to recovery of nonrigid motion from sequences of registered intensity and range images. The main idea of our approach is that a finite element (FEM) model incorporating material properties of the object can naturally handle both registration and deformation modeling using a single model-driving strategy. The method includes a multiscale iterative algorithm based on analysis of the undirected Hausdorff distance to recover correspondences. The method is evaluated with respect to speed and accuracy. Noise sensitivity issues are addressed. Advantages of the proposed approach are demonstrated using man-made elastic materials and human skin motion. Experiments with regular grid features are used for performance comparison with a conventional approach (separate snakes and FEM models). It is shown, however, that the new method does not require a sampling/correspondence template and can adapt the model to available object features. Usefulness of the method is presented not only in the context of tracking and motion analysis, but also for a burn scar detection application.