Is Super-Resolution with Optical Flow Feasible?

Reconstruction-based super-resolution from motion video has been an active area of study in computer vision and video analysis. Image alignment is a key component of super-resolution algorithms. Almost all previous super-resolution algorithms have assumed that standard methods of image alignment can provide accurate enough alignment for creating super-resolution images. However, a systematic study of the demands on accuracy of multi-image alignment and its effects on super-resolution has been lacking. Furthermore, implicitly or explicitly most algorithms have assumed that the multiple video frames or specific regions of interest are related through global parametric transformations. From previous works, it is not at all clear how super-resolution performs under alignment with piecewise parametric or local optical flow based methods. This paper is an attempt at understanding the influence of image alignment and warping errors on super-resolution. Requirements on the consistency of optical flow across multiple images are studied and it is shown that errors resulting from traditional flow algorithms may render super-resolution infeasible.