Manuel P. CAGIGAL and Pedro M. PRIETO

Dept. Fisica Aplicada, Univ. de Cantabria, 39005 Santander, Spain

(Received April 15, 1995; Accepted June 8, 1995)

The spatio-temporal Fourier transform is usually applied to determine the velocity of an object from a series of standard light intensity frames. In this paper the technique has been extended to determine the object acceleration. The techniques for velocity and acceleration determination based on the spatio-temporal Fourier transform have been applied to experimental low light level images. Under these conditions, the processing time is reduced so that, in those cases in which it is necessary to quickly obtain the object velocity or acceleration, low light level conditions would be advantageous, using intensity filters if necessary.

Key words : velocimetry - acceleration measurement - low-light-level images - spatio-temporal Fourier transform