Bidirectional optical flow estimation method and apparatus

Abstract

A bidirectional optical flow estimation method and apparatus are provided. The method includes acquiring a target image pair of which optical flow is to be estimated, and constructing an image pyramid for each target image in the target image pair respectively, and performing bidirectional optical flow estimation using a pre-trained optical flow estimation model based on the image pyramid, to obtain bidirectional optical flow between the target images. An optical flow estimation module in the optical flow estimation model is recursively called to perform the bidirectional optical flow estimation sequentially based on images of respective layers in the image pyramid according to a preset order, forward warping towards middle processing is performed on an image of a corresponding layer of the image pyramid before each call of the optical flow estimation module, and an image of an intermediate frame obtained by the forward warping towards middle processing is inputted into the optical flow estimation module. With the disclosure, the efficiency and generalization of bidirectional optical flow estimation can be improved, and model training and optical flow estimation overheads can be reduced.