Estimating apparent motion on satellite acquisitions with a physical dynamic model

Etienne Huot (1, 2, 3) , Isabelle Herlin (1, 2) , Nicolas Mercier (1, 2) , Evgeny Plotnikov (4)

1 Clime - Coupling environmental data and simulation models for software integration
2 CEREA - Centre d'Enseignement et de Recherche en Environnement Atmosphérique
3 UVSQ - Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines
4 MHI - Marine Hydrophysical Institute

The paper presents a motion estimation method based on data assimilation in a dynamic model, named Image Model, expressing the physical evolution of a quantity observed on the images. The application concerns the retrieval of apparent surface velocity from a sequence of satellite data, acquired over the ocean. The Image Model includes a shallow-water approximation for the dynamics of the velocity field (the evolution of the two components of motion are linked by the water layer thickness) and a transport equation for the image field. For retrieving the surface velocity, a sequence of Sea Surface Temperature (SST) acquisitions is assimilated in the Image Model with a 4D-Var method. This is based on the minimization of a cost function including the discrepancy between model outputs and SST data and a regularization term. Several types of regularization norms have been studied. Results are discussed to analyze the impact of the different components of the assimilation system.

Domaines: Modélisation et simulation

Etienne Huot, Isabelle Herlin, Nicolas Mercier, Evgeny Plotnikov. Estimating apparent motion on satellite acquisitions with a physical dynamic model. International Conference on Pattern Recognition - ICPR 2010, Aug 2010, Istambul, Turkey. ⟨10.1109/ICPR.2010.19⟩. ⟨inria-00538317⟩