Non-rigid motion and structure from contour

The elastic properties of real materials constrain the types of non-rigid motion that can occur. The authors show that by modeling and simulating the physics of non-rigid motion they can obtain good estimates of both object shape and velocity from contour data. The underlying model is based on the finite element method, and decouples the degrees of freedom by breaking down object motion into rigid and non-rigid vibration modes. Shape estimates are integrated over time by use of an extended Kalman filter, resulting in a stable estimate of both 3D shape and 3D velocity. Examples using X-ray imagery (of the heat) are presented