Modified digital image correlation for balancing the influence of subset size choice

A modified digital image correlation (DIC) method is presented to balance the influence of subset size choice, improve the calculation efficiency, and enhance the measurement accuracy. The relations between pixels and the central pixel are investigated. A relatively large subset size is selected in the method and all the pixels in a subset are treated nonuniformly. Weight is assigned to each pixel dependent on the significance of the pixel to track a subset from deformed images, and weights are computed by Butterworth function based on the distances between the pixels and the central pixel in the subset. Compared with classical DIC, the proposed method is a compromise between a small and a large subset. The choice of subset size for classical DIC is displaced by choice of parameters of Butterworth function in the presented method. The influence of subset size is reduced, and the calculation efficiency is improved with enhanced measurement accuracy by the modified method. Computer-simulated speckle patterns and real experiments are applied to verify the proposed method. (C) 2017 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)