Video surveillance systems are used for monitoring such areas as streets, railroad stations, industrial plants, buildings, or squares with video cameras, and on the basis of the sequences of images recorded with the video cameras, discovering anomalies in the monitored areas. A method for detecting image regions that are conspicuous in terms of the movement in them in a sequence of images of a scene and a corresponding apparatus and computer program are proposed, in which a current optical flow field in the sequence of images is calculated that includes motion vectors of image regions of the scene; an optical main flow field is determined that includes main flow directions of image regions of the scene; and a counterflow field with motion vectors of image regions that are conspicuous in terms of the movement in them is formed from image regions of the scene whose motion vectors are oriented differently from the main flow directions.