AUTOMATIC SHADOW DETECTION IN AERIAL AND TERRESTRIAL IMAGES

Shadows exist in almost all aerial and outdoor images, and they can be useful for estimating Sun position estimation or measuring object size. On the other hand, they represent a problem in processes such as object detection/recognition, image matching, etc., because they may be confused with dark objects and change the image radiometric properties. We address this problem on aerial and outdoor color images in this work. We use a filter to find low intensities as a first step. For outdoor color images, we analyze spectrum ratio properties to refine the detection, and the results are assessed with a dataset containing ground truth. For the aerial case we validate the detections depending of the hue component of pixels. This stage takes into account that, in deep shadows, most pixels have blue or violet wavelengths because of an atmospheric scattering effect.Shadows exist in almost all aerial and outdoor images, and they can be useful for estimating Sun position estimation or measuring object size. On the other hand, they represent a problem in processes such as object detection/recognition, image matching, etc., because they may be confused with dark objects and change the image radiometric properties. We address this problem on aerial and outdoor color images in this work. We use a filter to find low intensities as a first step. For outdoor color images, we analyze spectrum ratio properties to refine the detection, and the results are assessed with a dataset containing ground truth. For the aerial case we validate the detections depending of the hue component of pixels. This stage takes into account that, in deep shadows, most pixels have blue or violet wavelengths because of an atmospheric scattering effect

Drone Shadow Tracking

Aerial videos taken by a drone not too far above the surface may contain the drone's shadow projected on the scene. This deteriorates the aesthetic quality of videos. With the presence of other shadows, shadow removal cannot be directly applied, and the shadow of the drone must be tracked. Tracking a drone's shadow in a video is, however, challenging. The varying size, shape, change of orientation and drone altitude pose difficulties. The shadow can also easily disappear over dark areas. However, a shadow has specific properties that can be leveraged, besides its geometric shape. In this paper, we incorporate knowledge of the shadow's physical properties, in the form of shadow detection masks, into a correlation-based tracking algorithm. We capture a test set of aerial videos taken with different settings and compare our results to those of a state-of-the-art tracking algorithm.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Shadow Detection and Removal using Artificial Neural Network

Shadow detection and removal is an important task when dealing with colour images. Shadows are generated by a local and relative absence of light or a shadow appears on an area when the light from a source cannot reach the area due to obstruction by an object. Shadows are, first of all, a local decrease in the amount of light that reaches a surface. Secondly, they are a local change in the amount of light rejected by a surface toward the observer. However, they cause problems in computer vision applications, such as segmentation, object detection and object counting. Thus shadow detection and removal is a preprocessing task in computer vision. This thesis work proposes a simple method to detect and remove shadow from a single RGB image using artificial neural network. A shadow detection method is selected based on the phenomena of back propagation algorithm. Back propagation artificial neural network classifier has been used to train and test the neural network based on the extracted feature. The shadow removal is done by multiplying the shadow region by a constant

Automatic and accurate shadow detection from (potentially) a single image using near-infrared information

Shadows, due to their prevalence in natural images, are a long studied phenomenon in digital photography and computer vision. Indeed, their presence can be a hindrance for a number of algorithms; accurate detection (and sometimes subsequent removal) of shadows in images is thus of paramount importance. In this paper, we present a method to detect shadows in a fast and accurate manner. To do so, we employ the inherent sensitivity of digital camera sensors to the near-infrared (NIR) part of the spectrum. We start by observing that commonly encountered light sources have very distinct spectra in the NIR, and propose that ratios of the colour channels (red, green and blue) to the NIR image gives valuable information about impinging illumination. In addition, we assume that shadows are contained in the darker parts of an image for both visible and NIR. This latter assumption is corroborated by the fact that a number of colorants are transparent to the NIR, thus making parts of the image that are dark in both the visible and NIR prime shadow candidates. These hypotheses allow for fast, accurate shadow detection in real, complex, scenes, including soft and occlusion shadows. We demonstrate that the process is reliable enough to be performed in-camera on still mosaicked images by simulating a modified colour filter array (CFA) that can simultaneously capture NIR and visible images. Finally, we show that our binary shadow maps can be the input of a matting algorithm to improve their precision in a fully automatic manner

Shadow detection in still road images using chrominance properties of shadows and spectral power distribution of the illumination

A well-known challenge in vision-based driver assistance systems is cast shadows on the road, which makes fundamental tasks such as road and lane detections difficult. In as much as shadow detection relies on shadow features, in this paper, we propose a set of new chrominance properties of shadows based on the skylight and sunlight contributions to the road surface chromaticity. Six constraints on shadow and non-shadowed regions are derived from these properties. The chrominance properties and the associated constraints are used as shadow features in an effective shadow detection method intended to be integrated on an onboard road detection system where the identification of cast shadows on the road is a determinant stage. Onboard systems deal with still outdoor images; thus, the approach focuses on distinguishing shadow boundaries from material changes by considering two illumination sources: sky and sun. A non-shadowed road region is illuminated by both skylight and sunlight, whereas a shadowed one is illuminated by skylight only; thus, their chromaticity varies. The shadow edge detection strategy consists of the identification of image edges separating shadowed and non-shadowed road regions. The classification is achieved by verifying whether the pixel chrominance values of regions on both sides of the image edges satisfy the six constraints. Experiments on real traffc scenes demonstrated the effectiveness of our shadow detection system in detecting shadow edges on the road and material-change edges, outperforming previous shadow detection methods based on physical features, and showing the high potential of the new chrominance properties

Drone Shadow Tracking

Aerial videos taken by a drone not too far above the surface may contain the drone's shadow projected on the scene. This deteriorates the aesthetic quality of videos. With the presence of other shadows, shadow removal cannot be directly applied, and the shadow of the drone must be tracked. Tracking a drone's shadow in a video is, however, challenging. The varying size, shape, change of orientation and drone altitude pose difficulties. The shadow can also easily disappear over dark areas. However, a shadow has specific properties that can be leveraged, besides its geometric shape. In this paper, we incorporate knowledge of the shadow's physical properties, in the form of shadow detection masks, into a correlation-based tracking algorithm. We capture a test set of aerial videos taken with different settings and compare our results to those of a state-of-the-art tracking algorithm

A practical vision system for the detection of moving objects

The main goal of this thesis is to review and offer robust and efficient algorithms for the detection (or the segmentation) of foreground objects in indoor and outdoor scenes using colour image sequences captured by a stationary camera. For this purpose, the block diagram of a simple vision system is offered in Chapter 2. First this block diagram gives the idea of a precise order of blocks and their tasks, which should be performed to detect moving foreground objects. Second, a check mark () on the top right corner of a block indicates that this thesis contains a review of the most recent algorithms and/or some relevant research about it. In many computer vision applications, segmenting and extraction of moving objects in video sequences is an essential task. Background subtraction has been widely used for this purpose as the first step. In this work, a review of the efficiency of a number of important background subtraction and modelling algorithms, along with their major features, are presented. In addition, two background approaches are offered. The first approach is a Pixel-based technique whereas the second one works at object level. For each approach, three algorithms are presented. They are called Selective Update Using Non-Foreground Pixels of the Input Image , Selective Update Using Temporal Averaging and Selective Update Using Temporal Median , respectively in this thesis. The first approach has some deficiencies, which makes it incapable to produce a correct dynamic background. Three methods of the second approach use an invariant colour filter and a suitable motion tracking technique, which selectively exclude foreground objects (or blobs) from the background frames. The difference between the three algorithms of the second approach is in updating process of the background pixels. It is shown that the Selective Update Using Temporal Median method produces the correct background image for each input frame. Representing foreground regions using their boundaries is also an important task. Thus, an appropriate RLE contour tracing algorithm has been implemented for this purpose. However, after the thresholding process, the boundaries of foreground regions often have jagged appearances. Thus, foreground regions may not correctly be recognised reliably due to their corrupted boundaries. A very efficient boundary smoothing method based on the RLE data is proposed in Chapter 7. It just smoothes the external and internal boundaries of foreground objects and does not distort the silhouettes of foreground objects. As a result, it is very fast and does not blur the image. Finally, the goal of this thesis has been presenting simple, practical and efficient algorithms with little constraints which can run in real time