Thermo-visual feature fusion for object tracking using multiple spatiogram trackers

In this paper, we propose a framework that can efficiently combine features for robust tracking based on fusing the outputs of multiple spatiogram trackers. This is achieved without the exponential increase in storage and processing that other multimodal tracking approaches suffer from. The framework allows the features to be split arbitrarily between the trackers, as well as providing the flexibility to add, remove or dynamically weight features. We derive a mean-shift type algorithm for the framework that allows efficient object tracking with very low computational overhead. We especially target the fusion of thermal infrared and visible spectrum features as the most useful features for automated surveillance applications. Results are shown on multimodal video sequences clearly illustrating the benefits of combining multiple features using our framework

Comparison of fusion methods for thermo-visual surveillance tracking

In this paper, we evaluate the appearance tracking performance of multiple fusion schemes that combine information from standard CCTV and thermal infrared spectrum video for the tracking of surveillance objects, such as people, faces, bicycles and vehicles. We show results on numerous real world multimodal surveillance sequences, tracking challenging objects whose appearance changes rapidly. Based on these results we can determine the most promising fusion scheme

Infrared face recognition: a comprehensive review of methodologies and databases

Automatic face recognition is an area with immense practical potential which includes a wide range of commercial and law enforcement applications. Hence it is unsurprising that it continues to be one of the most active research areas of computer vision. Even after over three decades of intense research, the state-of-the-art in face recognition continues to improve, benefitting from advances in a range of different research fields such as image processing, pattern recognition, computer graphics, and physiology. Systems based on visible spectrum images, the most researched face recognition modality, have reached a significant level of maturity with some practical success. However, they continue to face challenges in the presence of illumination, pose and expression changes, as well as facial disguises, all of which can significantly decrease recognition accuracy. Amongst various approaches which have been proposed in an attempt to overcome these limitations, the use of infrared (IR) imaging has emerged as a particularly promising research direction. This paper presents a comprehensive and timely review of the literature on this subject. Our key contributions are: (i) a summary of the inherent properties of infrared imaging which makes this modality promising in the context of face recognition, (ii) a systematic review of the most influential approaches, with a focus on emerging common trends as well as key differences between alternative methodologies, (iii) a description of the main databases of infrared facial images available to the researcher, and lastly (iv) a discussion of the most promising avenues for future research.Comment: Pattern Recognition, 2014. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1306.160

Multispectral object segmentation and retrieval in surveillance video

This paper describes a system for object segmentation and feature extraction for surveillance video. Segmentation is performed by a dynamic vision system that fuses information from thermal infrared video with standard CCTV video in order to detect and track objects. Separate background modelling in each modality and dynamic mutual information based thresholding are used to provide initial foreground candidates for tracking. The belief in the validity of these candidates is ascertained using knowledge of foreground pixels and temporal linking of candidates. The transferable belief model is used to combine these sources of information and segment objects. Extracted objects are subsequently tracked using adaptive thermo-visual appearance models. In order to facilitate search and classification of objects in large archives, retrieval features from both modalities are extracted for tracked objects. Overall system performance is demonstrated in a simple retrieval scenari

A mask-based approach for the geometric calibration of thermal-infrared cameras

Accurate and efficient thermal-infrared (IR) camera calibration is important for advancing computer vision research within the thermal modality. This paper presents an approach for geometrically calibrating individual and multiple cameras in both the thermal and visible modalities. The proposed technique can be used to correct for lens distortion and to simultaneously reference both visible and thermal-IR cameras to a single coordinate frame. The most popular existing approach for the geometric calibration of thermal cameras uses a printed chessboard heated by a flood lamp and is comparatively inaccurate and difficult to execute. Additionally, software toolkits provided for calibration either are unsuitable for this task or require substantial manual intervention. A new geometric mask with high thermal contrast and not requiring a flood lamp is presented as an alternative calibration pattern. Calibration points on the pattern are then accurately located using a clustering-based algorithm which utilizes the maximally stable extremal region detector. This algorithm is integrated into an automatic end-to-end system for calibrating single or multiple cameras. The evaluation shows that using the proposed mask achieves a mean reprojection error up to 78% lower than that using a heated chessboard. The effectiveness of the approach is further demonstrated by using it to calibrate two multiple-camera multiple-modality setups. Source code and binaries for the developed software are provided on the project Web site