efficient matlab implementation for Lukas-Kanade step - algorithm

Question

I got an assignment in a video processing course - to implement the Lucas-Kanade algorithm. Since we have to do it in the pyramidal model, I first build a pyramid for each of the 2 input images, and then for each level I perform a number of LK iterations. in each step (iteration), the following code runs (note: the images are zero-padded so I can handle the image edges easily):
function [du,dv]= LucasKanadeStep(I1,I2,WindowSize)
It = I2-I1;
[Ix, Iy] = imgradientxy(I2);
Ixx = imfilter(Ix.*Ix, ones(5));
Iyy = imfilter(Iy.*Iy, ones(5));
Ixy = imfilter(Ix.*Iy, ones(5));
Ixt = imfilter(Ix.*It, ones(5));
Iyt = imfilter(Iy.*It, ones(5));
half_win = floor(WindowSize/2);
du = zeros(size(It));
dv = zeros(size(It));
A = zeros(2);
b = zeros(2,1);
%iterate only on the relevant parts of the images
for i = 1+half_win : size(It,1)-half_win
for j = 1+half_win : size(It,2)-half_win
A(1,1) = Ixx(i,j);
A(2,2) = Iyy(i,j);
A(1,2) = Ixy(i,j);
A(2,1) = Ixy(i,j);
b(1,1) = -Ixt(i,j);
b(2,1) = -Iyt(i,j);
U = pinv(A)*b;
du(i,j) = U(1);
dv(i,j) = U(2);
end
end
end
mathematically what I'm doing is calculating for every pixel (i,j) the following optical flow:
as you can see, in the code I am calculating this for each pixel, which takes quite a long time (the whole processing for 2 images - including building 3 levels pyramids and 3 LK steps like the one above on each level - takes about 25 seconds (!) on a remote connection to my university servers).
My question: Is there a way to calculate this single LK step without the nested for loops? it must be more efficient because the next step of the assignment is to stabilize a short video using this algorithm.. thanks.

Answer 1

I ran your code on my system and did profiling. Here is what I got.
As you can see inverting the matrix(pinv) is taking most of the time. You can try and vectorise your code I guess, but I am not sure how to do it. But I do know a trick to improve the compute time. You have to exploit the minimum variance of the matrix A. That is, compute the inverse only if the minimum variance of A is greater than some threshold. This will improve the speed as you won't be inverting the matrix for all the pixel.
You do this by modifying your code to the one shown below.
function [du,dv]= LucasKanadeStep(I1,I2,WindowSize)
It = double(I2-I1);
[Ix, Iy] = imgradientxy(I2);
Ixx = imfilter(Ix.*Ix, ones(5));
Iyy = imfilter(Iy.*Iy, ones(5));
Ixy = imfilter(Ix.*Iy, ones(5));
Ixt = imfilter(Ix.*It, ones(5));
Iyt = imfilter(Iy.*It, ones(5));
half_win = floor(WindowSize/2);
du = zeros(size(It));
dv = zeros(size(It));
A = zeros(2);
B = zeros(2,1);
%iterate only on the relevant parts of the images
for i = 1+half_win : size(It,1)-half_win
for j = 1+half_win : size(It,2)-half_win
A(1,1) = Ixx(i,j);
A(2,2) = Iyy(i,j);
A(1,2) = Ixy(i,j);
A(2,1) = Ixy(i,j);
B(1,1) = -Ixt(i,j);
B(2,1) = -Iyt(i,j);
% +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
% Code I added , threshold better be outside the loop.
lambda = eig(A);
threshold = 0.2
if (min(lambda)> threshold)
U = A\B;
du(i,j) = U(1);
dv(i,j) = U(2);
end
% end of addendum
% +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
% U = pinv(A)*B;
% du(i,j) = U(1);
% dv(i,j) = U(2);
end
end
end
I have set the threshold to 0.2. You can experiment with it. By using eigen value trick I was able to get the compute time from 37 seconds to 10 seconds(shown below). Using eigen, pinv hardly takes up the time like before.
Hope this helped. Good luck :)

Answer 2

Eventually I was able to find a much more efficient solution to this problem.
It is based on the formula shown in the question. The last 3 lines are what makes the difference - we get a loop-free code that works way faster. There were negligible differences from the looped version (~10^-18 or less in terms of absolute difference between the result matrices, ignoring the padding zone).
Here is the code:
function [du,dv]= LucasKanadeStep(I1,I2,WindowSize)
half_win = floor(WindowSize/2);
% pad frames with mirror reflections of itself
I1 = padarray(I1, [half_win half_win], 'symmetric');
I2 = padarray(I2, [half_win half_win], 'symmetric');
% create derivatives (time and space)
It = I2-I1;
[Ix, Iy] = imgradientxy(I2, 'prewitt');
% calculate dP = (du, dv) according to the formula
Ixx = imfilter(Ix.*Ix, ones(WindowSize));
Iyy = imfilter(Iy.*Iy, ones(WindowSize));
Ixy = imfilter(Ix.*Iy, ones(WindowSize));
Ixt = imfilter(Ix.*It, ones(WindowSize));
Iyt = imfilter(Iy.*It, ones(WindowSize));
% calculate the whole du,dv matrices AT ONCE!
invdet = (Ixx.*Iyy - Ixy.*Ixy).^-1;
du = invdet.*(-Iyy.*Ixt + Ixy.*Iyt);
dv = invdet.*(Ixy.*Ixt - Ixx.*Iyt);
end