Self-adaptive and bidirectional dynamic subset selection algorithm for digital image correlation

The selection of subset size is of great importance to the accuracy of digital image correlation (DIC). In the traditional DIC, a constant subset size is used for computing the entire image, which overlooks the differences among local speckle patterns of the image. Besides, it is very laborious to find the optimal global subset size of a speckle image. In this paper, a self-adaptive and bidirectional dynamic subset selection (SBDSS) algorithm is proposed to make the subset sizes vary according to their local speckle patterns, which ensures that every subset size is suitable and optimal. The sum of subset intensity variation (η) is defined as the assessment criterion to quantify the subset information. Both the threshold and initial guess of subset size in the SBDSS algorithm are self-adaptive to different images. To analyze the performance of the proposed algorithm, both numerical and laboratory experiments were performed. In the numerical experiments, images with different speckle distribution, different deformation and noise were calculated by both the traditional DIC and the proposed algorithm. The results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm achieves higher accuracy than the traditional DIC. Laboratory experiments performed on a substrate also demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is effective in selecting appropriate subset size for each point. © 2017 KIPS.