An Optimization Framework for Tracking Droplets in Fire Water Spray Images

Abstract

The properties of the flow from fire water nozzles, like droplet size and velocity distribution within the spray, are known to influence the fire suppression efficiency. To analyze the flow properties, the water spray is recorded with the use of a high-speed camera and laser light. Typically, each image of the water spray may contain tens of droplets, yielding a huge number of possible droplets paths between adjacent frames, i.e. with n droplets in two subsequent frames generates n^2 possible droplets paths with n! possible configurations using brute-force approach. In this paper, we propose an optimization method based on the Hungarian algorithm to calculate the droplet paths. Using this framework, each droplet path is optimized with respect to droplet position, droplet size and droplet velocity.