A self-organizing map (SOM) based algorithm has been developed for 3-D particle tracking velocimetry (3-D PTV) in stereoscopic particle pairing process. In this process every particle image in the left-camera frame should be paired with the most probably correct partner in the right-camera frame or vice versa for evaluating the exact coordinate. In the present work, the performance of the stereoscopic particle pairing is improved by applying proposed SOM optimization technique in comparison to a conventional epipolar line analysis. The algorithm is tested with the 3-D PIV standard image of the Visualization Society of Japan (VSJ) and the matching results show that the new algorithm is capable of increasing the recovery rate of correct particle pairs by a factor of 9 to 23 % compared to the conventional epipolar-line nearest-neighbor method.
['Kazuo Ohmi', 'Basanta Joshi', 'Sanjeeb Prasad Panday']
A SOM based stereo pair matching algorithm for 3-D particle tracking velocimetry