Learning distance metric for object contour tracking

Contour tracking can be implemented by measuring the probability distributions (e.g. intensity, color and texture) of both interior and exterior regions of an object contour. Choosing a suitable distance metric for measuring the (dis)similarity between two distributions significantly influences the tracking performance. Most existing contour tracking methods, however, utilize a predefined metric which may not be appropriate for measuring the distributions. This paper presents a novel variational level set framework for contour tracking. The image energy functional is modeled by the distance between the foreground distribution and the given template, divided by the distance between the background distribution and the template. The form of the distance between two distributions is represented by the quadratic distance (Rubner et al. in Int J Comput Vis 40(2):99–121, 2000). To obtain the more robust tracking results, a distance metric learning algorithm is employed to achieve the similarity matrix for the quadratic distance. In addition, a distance between the evolving contour and the zero level set of the reference shape function is adopted as the shape prior to constrain the contour evolution process. Experiments on several video sequences prove the effectiveness and robustness of our method.     

An Occlusion-aware Edge-Based Method for Monocular 3D Object Tracking using Edge Confidence

We propose an edge-based method for 6DOF pose tracking of rigid objects using a monocular RGB camera. One of the critical problem for edge-based methods is to search the object contour points in the image corresponding to the known 3D model points. However, previous methods often produce false object contour points in case of cluttered backgrounds and partial occlusions. In this paper, we propose a novel edge-based 3D objects tracking method to tackle this problem. To search the object contour points, foreground and background clutter points are first filtered out using edge color cue, then object contour points are searched by maximizing their edge confidence which combines edge color and distance cues. Furthermore, the edge confidence is integrated into the edge-based energy function to reduce the influence of false contour points caused by cluttered backgrounds and partial occlusions. We also extend our method to multi-object tracking which can handle mutual occlusions. We compare our method with the recent state-of-art methods on challenging public datasets. Experiments demonstrate that our method improves robustness and accuracy against cluttered backgrounds and partial occlusions.     

一种基于Hausdorff距离的运动物体跟踪算法

针对视频处理中运动物体的检测和跟踪问题,提出了一种基于Hausdorff距离的目标跟踪算法。新算法提出首先采用多尺度分水岭变换获取运动物体模型,消除了传统基于分水岭变换算法存在的缺陷;然后使用部分Hausdorff距离实现后续帧中运动物体模型的匹配;最后再次使用多尺度分水岭算法完成运动物体模型的更新。实验表明,该算法可以有效地跟踪多个刚体或非刚体目标。     

基于可变模型的目标实时跟踪

为了在图像序列中实现目标的快速定位和实时跟踪,该文提出了一种基于可变模型的快速目标跟踪算法,在已知模型条件下,利用区域模型相关匹配的思想对目标模型进行实时更新,充分利用目标莲续运动过程中目标形状在两个连续帧中变化不大、相邻两帧中目标的速度和位移变化不大的特点,以当前帧目标模型作为下一帧的先验模型;综合运用模型梯度信息、运动信息和模型区域特征匹配的方法来跟踪目标。由于算法综合考虑了目标模型的区域信息和轮廓信息,因此对背景干扰不太敏感。在头部跟踪实验过程中,该文算法跟踪移动目标的实时性和准确性比较好,抗干扰能力较强,基本上可以满足鲁棒性和快速性的要求。     

基于自适应模板更新的改进孪生卷积网络目标跟踪算法

现有的孪生网络目标跟踪算法采用边界框模板进行跟踪,在目标形变、遮挡等干扰下很容易导致跟踪漂移。在轮廓检测网络和孪生卷积网络(Siamese)跟踪网络的基础上,提出一种基于深度轮廓模板更新的改进孪生卷积网络目标跟踪算法。利用轮廓检测网络获取目标边缘轮廓,降低背景杂波干扰;利用改进的Siamese网络获得轮廓模板和搜索区域的深度特征;通过相似性匹配获得最优跟踪目标。仿真实验结果表明,所提出的改进模型能够提高目标形变、遮挡等干扰下目标跟踪性能,具有较高的工程应用价值。     

Tensor-SIFT Based Earth Mover’s Distance for Contour Tracking

Contour tracking in complex environments is a difficult problem due to the cluttered backgrounds, illumination changes, occlusion and camera viewpoint variations etc. This paper presents a region functional based on the Earth Mover’s Distance (EMD), computation of which is mathematically modeled as the transportation problem (TP), for robust contour tracking in the challenging conditions. Formulation of EMD-based functional can be described as variational EMD (VEMD) since the contour curve function is involved for optimization. Minimizing the EMD-based functional is nontrivial and we develop a two-phase method for its optimization. In the first phase, letting the candidate contour be fixed, we seek the best solution to the TP by the Simplex algorithm. Then through the shape derivative theory, we make a perturbation analysis of the contour around the best solution to the TP. As a result we obtain a partial differential equation (PDE) that is solved by the level-set algorithm. The two-phase procedure iterates until the appropriate stopping criterions are satisfied. Alongside the EMD-based functional formulation, we introduce a dimensionality reduction method by tensor decomposition, achieving a low-dimensional Tensor-SIFT features for object representation. Applicable to both the color and gray-level images, Tensor-SIFT features are distinctive, insensitive to illumination and viewpoint changes. Finally, we develop an integrated algorithm that combines various techniques, e.g. the Simplex algorithm, narrow-band level set and fast marching algorithms. Particularly, we provide a method for the level-set initialization between two successive frames and the criterions for stopping the iterative functional optimization. Experiments in challenging image sequences show that the proposed work has promising performance.     

一种新的完全欧氏距离变换算法

论文提出了一种基于边界剥离的二维完全欧氏距离变换算法。该算法从物体目标的最外层边界开始,自外向内、逐层对物体目标区域进行边界跟踪、剥离。在跟踪过程中,根据当前边界像素点的已获得距离变换结果或为背景的邻域像素信息,计算其与最近背景像素间的欧氏距离,从而实现距离变换。和已有算法相比,文中算法具有简单快速、容易实现,得到的是完全欧氏距离的优点,在分离粘连物体的应用中,取得了良好分离效果。     

采用测地线活动轮廓模型检测与跟踪运动目标

水平集几何活动轮廓模型能较好地适应曲线的拓扑变化.为了跟踪和获取刚体和非刚体运动目标的轮廓信息,提出了一种基于改进测地线活动轮廓(GAC)模型和Kalman滤波相结合的算法以检测和跟踪运动目标.该算法首先采用高斯混合模型和背景差分获取目标的运动区域,在运动区域内采用引入距离规则化项的GAC模型进行曲线演化,使改进GAC模型在运动目标的真实轮廓处收敛;然后通过结合Kalman滤波预测目标下一帧的位置,实现对目标轮廓跟踪.实验结果表明,该方法适用于刚体和非刚体目标,在部分遮挡的情况下也能保持良好的检测和跟踪效果.     

基于子区域匹配的稀疏表示跟踪算法

经典稀疏表示目标跟踪算法在处理复杂视频时不免出现跟踪不稳定情况且当目标发生遮挡时易发生漂移现象。针对这一问题,提出一种基于子区域匹配的稀疏表示跟踪算法。首先,将初始目标模板划分为若干子区域,利用LK图像配准算法建立观测模型预测下一帧目标运动状态。然后,对预测的目标模型区域进行同等划分,并在匹配过程中寻找最优子区域。最后,在模板更新过程中引入一种新的模板校正机制,能够有效克服漂移现象。将该算法与多种目标跟踪算法在不同视频序列下进行对比,实验结果表明在目标发生遮挡、运动、光照影响及复杂背景等情况下该算法具有较为理想的跟踪效果,并与经典稀疏表示跟踪算法相比具有较好的跟踪性能。     

Novel fuzzy active contour model with kernel metric for image segmentation

In this paper, a novel region-based fuzzy active contour model with kernel metric is proposed for a robust and stable image segmentation. This model can detect the boundaries precisely and work well with images in the presence of noise, outliers and low contrast. It segments an image into two regions – the object and the background by the minimization of a predefined energy function. Due to the kernel metric incorporated in the energy and the fuzziness of the energy, the active contour evolves very stably without the reinitialization for the level set function during the evolution. Here the fuzziness provides the model with a strong ability to reject local minima and the kernel metric is employed to construct a nonlinear version of energy function based on a level set framework. This new fuzzy and nonlinear version of energy function makes the updating of region centers more robust against the noise and outliers in an image. Theoretical analysis and experimental results show that the proposed model achieves a much better balance between accuracy and efficiency compared with other active contour models.     

一种改进的活动区域轮廓模型 ——无需水平集重新初始化

基于区域的活动区域模型已经成功应用在图像分割、目标跟踪等领域,较之基于梯度的活动轮廓模型具有很多优点。但是,这些水平集模型在演化过程中,为了保持为符号距离函数,必须对其重新初始化,降低了曲线演化速度,增加了实现复杂度。为了解决重新初始化问题,在测地活动区域模型的能量函数中,加入惩罚项来约束水平集保持为符号距离函数,无需再重新初始化,极大地提高了演化速度。将其运用在纹理图像、脑MR图像分割以及视频跟踪中,实验证明该模型是有效的。     

综合颜色和轮廓曲线特征的图像检索方法研究

传统的基于内容图像检索（CBIR）及跟踪算法主要利用图像的颜色、纹理等特征进行相似性比较,但大量的实验和应用也表明利用颜色和纹理进行图像相似性比较在空间结构和对象形状上难以精确控制,致使图像检索经常出现一些不可预料的结果。为了提高图像在形状、颜色及纹理上的检索精度,提出了一种综合颜色和图像轮廓曲线特征的检索方法。该方法分割图像并提取图像中感兴趣对象的轮廓,对提取的轮廓进行仿射变换及最小值化处理,经处理后的轮廓带有边缘的完整信息,具有几何不变性;利用聚类的颜色信息,提取主聚类的直方图,所提取的直方图不仅包含了主聚类的颜色信息也包含了该聚类的空间位置信息。利用检索对象与被检索对象的颜色距离直方图及轮廓曲线距离偏差的加权平均度量检索及被检索对象的相似性。实验结果表明,针对基于感兴趣对象的图像检索问题,给出了一种具有高度检索精度的算法。     

基于多尺度变形模板的目标检测与识别

在分析现有模板匹配算法存在问题的基础上，提出一种基于多尺度变形模板的新方法，它在已有的Snake算法基础上，加入了形态约束，并利用小波变换的多尺度特性，使得匹配过程在由粗至精的尺度上进行，从而使运算速度大大提高，对噪声的敏感程度也相应下降，而轮廓初始化是在较粗的尺度上，利用Hausdorff距离初步匹配得到的，漏警概率较低。实验结果与理论分析相吻合，验证了算法对多类目标适用，具有速度快，精度高和对图像畸变，噪声与遮挡不敏感的优点。     

一种基于轮廓特征点的图像检索方法

传统基于形状的图像检索方法检索效率较低,针对该问题,提出一种基于对象轮廓特征点的图像检索方法。利用Mean Shift算法提取感兴趣对象,以对象曲率的局部极值点作为特征点,并将对象表示为这些特征点的特征向量,定义检索对象与被检索对象特征向量间的距离匹配机制,实现对象的匹配或识别。实验结果表明,与传统方法相比,该方法具有较高的查全率和查准率。     

基于TLD框架的快速目标跟踪方法

现实中目标在被长期跟踪时容易发生形变、遮挡、光照干扰以及其它问题,现有跟踪算法虽能解决该系列问题但算法计算量巨大导致跟踪系统实时性能较差,很难应用于实际场合。因此准确快速跟踪目标成为近年来非常有挑战的热点课题。以国外学者Zdenek Kalal等人提出的TLD(Tracking-Learning-Detection)框架为基础,提出了三点改进方法。一根据目标所占整幅图像的面积大小动态调整被处理图像的分辨率,从总体上减少样本数量;二在目标邻近区域扫描生成样本,缩小检测器的检测范围;三更换检测部分中分类器模板匹配方法,实现快速匹配,提高算法运行速度。针对与不同的场景,实验表明上述问题在改进后的算法中得到了较大的改善,算法的计算量有效降低,系统运行速度得到提高。且对于实时摄像头监控,改进后算法在保证目标跟踪准确率的同时拥有较好的实时性。     

Unsupervised active contours driven by density distance and local fitting energy with applications to medical image segmentation

This study presents an efficient variational region-based active contour model for segmenting images without priori knowledge about the object or background. In order to handle intensity inhomogeneities and noise, we propose to integrate into the region-based local intensity model a global density distance inspired by the Bhattacharyya flow. The local term based on local information of segmented image allows the model to deal with bias field artifact, which arises in data acquisition processes. The global term, which is based on the density distance between the probability distribution functions of image intensity inside and outside the active contour, provides information for accurate segmentation, keeps the curve from spilling, and addresses noise in the image. Intensive 2D and 3D experiments on many imaging modalities of medical fields such as computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, and ultrasound images demonstrate the effectiveness of the model when dealing with images with blurred object boundary, intensity inhomogeneities, and noise.     

Visual tracking with conditionally adaptive multiple template update scheme for intricate videos

Tracking of moving objects in real-time scenes is a challenging research problem in computer vision. This is due to incessant live changes in the object features, background, occlusions, and illumination deviations occurring at different instances in the scene. With the objective of tracking visual objects in intricate videos, this paper presents a new color-independent tracking approach, the contributions of which are threefold. First, the illumination level of the sequences is maintained constant using fast discrete curvelet transform. Fisher information metric is calculated based on a cumulative score by comparing the template patches with a reference template at different timeframes. This metric is used for quantifying distances between the consecutive frame histogram distributions. Then, a novel iterative algorithm called conditionally adaptive multiple template update is proposed to regulate the object templates for handling dynamic occlusions effectively. The proposed method is evaluated on a set of extensive challenging benchmark datasets. Experimental results in terms of Center Location Error (CLE), Tracking Success Score (TSS), and Occlusion Success Score (OSS) show that the proposed method competes well with other relevant state-of-the-art tracking methods.