Reconstructing Evolving Tree Structures in Time Lapse Sequences by Enforcing Time-Consistency

Abstract

We propose a novel approach to reconstructing curvilinear tree structures evolving over time, such as road networks in 20 aerial images or neural structures in 3D microscopy stacks acquired in vivo. To enforce temporal consistency, we simultaneously process all images in a sequence, as opposed to reconstructing structures of interest in each image independently. We formulate the problem as a Quadratic Mixed Integer Program and demonstrate the additional robustness that comes from using all available visual clues at once, instead of working frame by frame. Furthermore, when the linear structures undergo local changes over time, our approach automatically detects them.