Real-time detection and tracking of multiple objects with partial decoding in H.264/AVC bitstream domain

In this paper, we show that we can apply probabilistic spatiotemporal macroblock filtering (PSMF) and partial decoding processes to effectively detect and track multiple objects in real time in H.264|AVC bitstreams with stationary background. Our contribution is that our method cannot only show fast processing time but also handle multiple moving objects that are articulated, changing in size or internally have monotonous color, even though they contain a chaotic set of non-homogeneous motion vectors inside. In addition, our partial decoding process for H.264|AVC bitstreams enables to improve the accuracy of object trajectories and overcome long occlusion by using extracted color information.Comment: SPIE Real-Time Image and Video Processing Conference 200

A novel approach to recognition of the detected moving objects in non-stationary background using heuristics and colour measurements : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Engineering at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand

Computer vision has become a growing area of research which involves two fundamental steps, object detection and object recognition. These two steps have been implemented in real world scenarios such as video surveillance systems, traffic cameras for counting cars, or more explicit detection such as detecting faces and recognizing facial expressions. Humans have a vision system that provides sophisticated ways to detect and recognize objects. Colour detection, depth of view and our past experience helps us determine the class of objects with respect to object’s size, shape and the context of the environment. Detection of moving objects on a non-stationary background and recognizing the class of these detected objects, are tasks that have been approached in many different ways. However, the accuracy and efficiency of current methods for object detection are still quite low, due to high computation time and memory intensive approaches. Similarly, object recognition has been approached in many ways but lacks the perceptive methodology to recognise objects. This thesis presents an improved algorithm for detection of moving objects on a non-stationary background. It also proposes a new method for object recognition. Detection of moving objects is initiated by detecting SURF features to identify unique keypoints in the first frame. These keypoints are then searched through individually in another frame using cross correlation, resulting in a process called optical flow. Rejection of outliers is performed by using keypoints to compute global shift of pixels due to camera motion, which helps isolate the points that belong to the moving objects. These points are grouped into clusters using the proposed improved clustering algorithm. The clustering function is capable of adapting to the search radius around a feature point by taking the average Euclidean distance between all the feature points into account. The detected object is then processed through colour measurement and heuristics. Heuristics provide context of the surroundings to recognize the class of the object based upon the object’s size, shape and the environment it is in. This gives object recognition a perceptive approach. Results from the proposed method have shown successful detection of moving objects in various scenes with dynamic backgrounds achieving an efficiency for object detection of over 95% for both indoor and outdoor scenes. The average processing time was computed to be around 16.5 seconds which includes the time taken to detect objects, as well as recognize them. On the other hand, Heuristic and colour based object recognition methodology achieved an efficiency of over 97%

Accelerated hardware video object segmentation: From foreground detection to connected components labelling

This is the preprint version of the Article - Copyright @ 2010 ElsevierThis paper demonstrates the use of a single-chip FPGA for the segmentation of moving objects in a video sequence. The system maintains highly accurate background models, and integrates the detection of foreground pixels with the labelling of objects using a connected components algorithm. The background models are based on 24-bit RGB values and 8-bit gray scale intensity values. A multimodal background differencing algorithm is presented, using a single FPGA chip and four blocks of RAM. The real-time connected component labelling algorithm, also designed for FPGA implementation, run-length encodes the output of the background subtraction, and performs connected component analysis on this representation. The run-length encoding, together with other parts of the algorithm, is performed in parallel; sequential operations are minimized as the number of run-lengths are typically less than the number of pixels. The two algorithms are pipelined together for maximum efficiency

Structured Light-Based 3D Reconstruction System for Plants.

Camera-based 3D reconstruction of physical objects is one of the most popular computer vision trends in recent years. Many systems have been built to model different real-world subjects, but there is lack of a completely robust system for plants. This paper presents a full 3D reconstruction system that incorporates both hardware structures (including the proposed structured light system to enhance textures on object surfaces) and software algorithms (including the proposed 3D point cloud registration and plant feature measurement). This paper demonstrates the ability to produce 3D models of whole plants created from multiple pairs of stereo images taken at different viewing angles, without the need to destructively cut away any parts of a plant. The ability to accurately predict phenotyping features, such as the number of leaves, plant height, leaf size and internode distances, is also demonstrated. Experimental results show that, for plants having a range of leaf sizes and a distance between leaves appropriate for the hardware design, the algorithms successfully predict phenotyping features in the target crops, with a recall of 0.97 and a precision of 0.89 for leaf detection and less than a 13-mm error for plant size, leaf size and internode distance

Extraction of moving objects from their background based on multiple adaptive thresholds and boundary evaluation

The extraction of moving objects from their background is a challenging task in visual surveillance. As a single threshold often fails to resolve ambiguities and correctly segment the object, in this paper, we propose a new method that uses three thresholds to accurately classify pixels as foreground or background. These thresholds are adaptively determined by considering the distributions of differences between the input and background images and are used to generate three boundary sets. These boundary sets are then merged to produce a final boundary set that represents the boundaries of the moving objects. The merging step proceeds by first identifying boundary segment pairs that are significantly inconsistent. Then, for each inconsistent boundary segment pair, its associated curvature, edge response, and shadow index are used as criteria to evaluate the probable location of the true boundary. The resulting boundary is finally refined by estimating the width of the halo-like boundary and referring to the foreground edge map. Experimental results show that the proposed method consistently performs well under different illumination conditions, including indoor, outdoor, moderate, sunny, rainy, and dim cases. By comparing with a ground truth in each case, both the classification error rate and the displacement error indicate an accurate detection, which show substantial improvement in comparison with other existing methods. © 2010 IEEE.published_or_final_versio