In this Thesis an architecture to determine the optical flow from image sequences in real-time has been proposed. This architecture will be developed using basically programmable logic devices, specifically FPGAs. By that reason the architecture will be developed using a hardware description language, concretely the VHDL.

The optical flow is an important component in the development of vision systems related with the motion analysis. The applications of the optical flow are diverse, going from the dynamic characterization of objects in images to the determination of the three-dimensional characteristics of environment, passing through the reconstruction and improvement of images.

Most important constrains imposed to the system was the real time processing and a suitable image resolution, similar to the obtained from an standard television camera.

For the development of this Thesis it was necessary to create a set of tools that allow to work with image processing systems developed with VHDL. In addition a methodology to develop a system hardware from a mathematical model has been presented, like the used to obtain the optical flow.