On Single-Sequence and Multi-Sequence Factorizations

Subspace based factorization methods are commonly used for a variety of applications, such as 3D reconstruction, multi-body segmentation and optical flow estimation. These are usually applied to a single video sequence. In this paper we present an analysis of the multi-sequence case and place it under a single framework with the single sequence case. In particular, we start by analyzing the characteristics of subspace based spatial and temporal segmentation. We show that in many cases objects moving with different 3D motions will be captured as a single object using multi-body (spatial) factorization approaches. Similarly, frames viewing different shapes might be grouped as displaying the same shape in the temporal factorization framework. Temporal factorization provides temporal grouping of frames by employing a subspace based approach to capture non-rigid shape changes (Zelnik-Manor and Irani, 2004). We analyze what causes these degeneracies and show that in the case of multiple sequences these can be made useful and provide information for both temporal synchronization of sequences and spatial matching of points across sequences. A preliminary version of this paper appeared in Zelnik-Manor and Irani (2003).     

交互式分割视频运动对象的研究与实现

在 MPEG- 4视频编码标准中 ,为了实现基于视频内容的交互功能 ,视频序列的每一帧由视频对象面来表示 ,而生成视频对象面 ,需要对视频序列中运动对象进行有效分割 ,并跟踪运动对象随时间的变化 .在视频分割方法中 ,交互式分割视频对象能满足分割的效率与质量指标要求 ,因此提出了一种交互分割与自动跟踪相结合的方式来分割视频语义对象 ,即在初始分割时 ,依据用户的交互与形态学的分水线分割算法相结合提取视频对象轮廓 ,并用改进的轮廓跟踪方法有效提高视频对象轮廓的精度 ;对后续帧的跟踪 ,采用六参数仿射变换跟踪运动对象轮廓的变化 ,用平移估算的运动矢量作为初始值 ,计算六参数仿射变换的参数 .实验结果表明 ,该方法能有效地分割并跟踪视频运动对象     

分裂合并运动分割的多运动视觉里程计方法

目的 视觉里程计（visual odometry,VO）仅需要普通相机即可实现精度可观的自主定位,已经成为计算机视觉和机器人领域的研究热点,但是当前研究及应用大多基于场景为静态的假设,即场景中只有相机运动这一个运动模型,无法处理多个运动模型,因此本文提出一种基于分裂合并运动分割的多运动视觉里程计方法,获得场景中除相机运动外多个运动目标的运动状态。方法 基于传统的视觉里程计框架,引入多模型拟合的方法分割出动态场景中的多个运动模型,采用RANSAC（random sample consensus）方法估计出多个运动模型的运动参数实例;接着将相机运动信息以及各个运动目标的运动信息转换到统一的坐标系中,获得相机的视觉里程计结果,以及场景中各个运动目标对应各个时刻的位姿信息;最后采用局部窗口光束法平差直接对相机的姿态以及计算出来的相机相对于各个运动目标的姿态进行校正,利用相机运动模型的内点和各个时刻获得的相机相对于运动目标的运动参数,对多个运动模型的轨迹进行优化。结果 本文所构建的连续帧运动分割方法能够达到较好的分割结果,具有较好的鲁棒性,连续帧的分割精度均能达到近100%,充分保证后续估计各个运动模型参数的准确性。本文方法不仅能够有效估计出相机的位姿,还能估计出场景中存在的显著移动目标的位姿,在各个分段路径中相机自定位与移动目标的定位结果位置平均误差均小于6%。结论 本文方法能够同时分割出动态场景中的相机自身运动模型和不同运动的动态物体运动模型,进而同时估计出相机和各个动态物体的绝对运动轨迹,构建出多运动视觉里程计过程。     

Composition and Retrieval of Visual Information for Video Databases

This paper presents a new visual aggregation model for representing visual information about moving objects in video data. Based on available automatic scene segmentation and object tracking algorithms, the proposed model provides eight operations to calculate object motions at various levels of semantic granularity. It represents trajectory, color and dimensions of a single moving object and the directional and topological relations among multiple objects over a time interval. Each representation of a motion can be normalized to improve computational cost and storage utilization. To facilitate query processing, there are two optimal approximate matching algorithms designed to match time-series visual features of moving objects. Experimental results indicate that the proposed algorithms outperform the conventional subsequence matching methods substantially in the similarity between the two trajectories. Finally, the visual aggregation model is integrated into a relational database system and a prototype content-based video retrieval system has been implemented as well.     

基于变化检测与时空滤波器的视频对象分割方法

随着基于对象视频应用的发展，视频对象的分割成为人们研究的熟点。本文提出了一种结合变化检测与时空滤波器快速分割视频对象的新方法，该方法利用t分布显著性检验检测帧问的变化，不需要知道噪声的方差；利用间隔为k的两帧图像代替连续两帧进行变化检测，可以很好地处理关节运动和慢运动。然后通过时空滤波器快速有效地消除由于视频对象运动而露出的背景区域，同时能够减少变化检测掩膜中的残留噪声。最后，通过形态学处理实现视频对象的分割。     

A framework for heading-guided recognition of human activity

A combined 2D, 3D approach is presented that allows for robust tracking of moving people and recognition of actions. It is assumed that the system observes multiple moving objects via a single, uncalibrated video camera. Low-level features are often insufficient for detection, segmentation, and tracking of non-rigid moving objects. Therefore, an improved mechanism is proposed that integrates low-level (image processing), mid-level (recursive 3D trajectory estimation), and high-level (action recognition) processes. A novel extended Kalman filter formulation is used in estimating the relative 3D motion trajectories up to a scale factor. The recursive estimation process provides a prediction and error measure that is exploited in higher-level stages of action recognition. Conversely, higher-level mechanisms provide feedback that allows the system to reliably segment and maintain the tracking of moving objects before, during, and after occlusion. Heading-guided recognition (HGR) is proposed as an efficient method for adaptive classification of activity. The HGR approach is demonstrated using “motion history images” that are then recognized via a mixture-of-Gaussians classifier. The system is tested in recognizing various dynamic human outdoor activities: running, walking, roller blading, and cycling. In addition, experiments with real and synthetic data sets are used to evaluate stability of the trajectory estimator with respect to noise.     

Multi-body Factorization with Uncertainty: Revisiting Motion Consistency

Dynamic analysis of video sequences often relies on the segmentation of the sequence into regions of consistent motions. Approaching this problem requires a definition of which motions are regarded as consistent. Common approaches to motion segmentation usually group together points or image regions that have the same motion between successive frames (where the same motion can be 2D, 3D, or non-rigid). In this paper we define a new type of motion consistency, which is based on temporal consistency of behaviors across multiple frames in the video sequence. Our definition of consistent “temporal behavior” is expressed in terms of multi-frame linear subspace constraints. This definition applies to 2D, 3D, and some non-rigid motions without requiring prior model selection. We further show that our definition of motion consistency extends to data with directional uncertainty, thus leading to a dense segmentation of the entire image. Such segmentation is obtained by applying the new motion consistency constraints directly to covariance-weighted image brightness measurements. This is done without requiring prior correspondence estimation nor feature tracking.     

Coupled object detection and tracking from static cameras and moving vehicles

We present a novel approach for multi-object tracking which considers object detection and spacetime trajectory estimation as a coupled optimization problem. Our approach is formulated in an MDL hypothesis selection framework, which allows it to recover from mismatches and temporarily lost tracks. Building upon a multi-view/multi-category object detector, it localizes cars and pedestrians in the input images. The 2D object detections are converted to 3D observations, which are accumulated in a world coordinate frame. Trajectory analysis in a spacetime window yields physically plausible trajectory candidates. Tracking is achieved by performing model selection after every frame. At each time instant, our approach searches for the globally optimal set of spacetime trajectories which provides the best explanation for the current image and all evidence collected so far, while satisfying the constraints that no two objects may occupy the same physical space, nor explain the same image pixels at any time. Successful trajectory hypotheses are then fed back to guide object detection in future frames. The resulting approach can initialize automatically and track a large and varying number of objects from both static and moving cameras. We evaluate our approach on several challenging video sequences with both a surveillance-type scenario and a scenario where the input videos are taken from a moving vehicle.     

一种基于三次帧差边缘交集的视频对象提取方法

为了克服利用变化检测分割视频对象过程中的噪声、复杂运动、暴露背景的影响，提出了一种新的视频对象分割方法。该方法利用间隔为k帧的两帧图像代替连续两帧求帧差，然后取三次帧差边缘的交集，并且对运动对象的断裂轮廓点进行连接。最后，通过填充和数学形态学处理实现视频对象的分割。试验结果表明，该算法能够自动精确的定位运动对象的外轮廓。     

Moving object detection using Markov Random Field and Distributed Differential Evolution

In this article, we present an algorithm for detecting moving objects from a given video sequence. Here, spatial and temporal segmentations are combined together to detect moving objects. In spatial segmentation, a multi-layer compound Markov Random Field (MRF) is used which models spatial, temporal, and edge attributes of image frames of a given video. Segmentation is viewed as a pixel labeling problem and is solved using the maximum a posteriori (MAP) probability estimation principle; i.e., segmentation is done by searching a labeled configuration that maximizes this probability. We have proposed using a Differential Evolution (DE) algorithm with neighborhood-based mutation (termed as Distributed Differential Evolution (DDE) algorithm) for estimating the MAP of the MRF model. A window is considered over the entire image lattice for mutation of each target vector of the DDE; thereby enhancing the speed of convergence. In case of temporal segmentation, the Change Detection Mask (CDM) is obtained by thresholding the absolute differences of the two consecutive spatially segmented image frames. The intensity/color values of the original pixels of the considered current frame are superimposed in the changed regions of the modified CDM to extract the Video Object Planes (VOPs). To test the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, five reference and one real life video sequences are considered. Results of the proposed method are compared with four state of the art techniques and provide better spatial segmentation and better identification of the location of moving objects.     

基于小波变换和ICA的运动目标分割

提出一种时空融合的运动目标分割方法.在时域方面,采用时间轴一维小波变换提取运动对象,然后用独立成分分析法提取独立的运动对象,并基于灰度直方图进一步提取视频对象;在空域方面,提出对轮廓提取后的图像进行分水岭变换的改进方法.与COST211 AM算法比较表明,文中方法能更完整、准确地提取出运动对象.     

图像和视频的低多边形渲染

低多边形是近来艺术设计界的热门风格。为了提高图像和视频低多边形风格化的质量,提出一种基于边缘特征和超像素分割的图像和视频低多边形渲染方法。首先提取相邻超像素的交点以及对特征边和超像素边界的差集的均匀采样点作为三角网格顶点,并执行Delaunay三角剖分来生成初始三角网格;然后采用带约束的二次误差度量方法对生成的网格进行简化,以生成最终三角网格;最后对三角网格填充颜色,得到了具有低多边形风格的图像。对于视频低多边形渲染,使用时间一致性超像素跨帧跟踪同一对象的相同部分,以建立视频帧之间的关联,降低视频渲染后的抖动。此外,采用视频分割方法分割视频中的移动对象,获得移动对象与背景之间不同密度的采样点,对移动对象进行渲染获从而得到视频的局部风格化效果。实验结果表明,所提方法能够生成具有较好视觉效果的低多边形渲染结果。     

一种内容完整的视频稳定算法

设计了一种基于可靠特征集合匹配的内容完整的视频稳定算法。为了避免运动前景上的特征点参与运动估计,由经典的KLT(Kanade-Lucas-Tomasi)算法提取特征点,而后基于特征有效性判定规则对特征点集合进行有效性验证以提高特征点的可靠性。利用通过验证的特征点对全局运动进行估计,得到精确的运动参数并据此对视频图像进行运动补偿。对于运动补偿造成的无定义区,首先计算当前帧的定义区与相邻帧的光流,以此为向导腐蚀无定义区;利用拼接的方法,填充仍为无定义区的像素。实验结果表明该算法对于前景物体运动具有较好的鲁棒性并能够生成内容完整的稳定视频序列。     

Moving object detection and segmentation in urban environments from a moving platform

This paper proposes an effective approach to detect and segment moving objects from two time-consecutive stereo frames, which leverages the uncertainties in camera motion estimation and in disparity computation. First, the relative camera motion and its uncertainty are computed by tracking and matching sparse features in four images. Then, the motion likelihood at each pixel is estimated by taking into account the ego-motion uncertainty and disparity in computation procedure. Finally, the motion likelihood, color and depth cues are combined in the graph-cut framework for moving object segmentation. The efficiency of the proposed method is evaluated on the KITTI benchmarking datasets, and our experiments show that the proposed approach is robust against both global (camera motion) and local (optical flow) noise. Moreover, the approach is dense as it applies to all pixels in an image, and even partially occluded moving objects can be detected successfully. Without dedicated tracking strategy, our approach achieves high recall and comparable precision on the KITTI benchmarking sequences.     

3D Motion Completion in Crowded Scenes

Crowded motions refer to multiple objects moving around and interacting such as crowds, pedestrians and etc. We capture crowded scenes using a depth scanner at video frame rates. Thus, our input is a set of depth frames which sample the scene over time. Processing such data is challenging as it is highly unorganized, with large spatio‐temporal holes due to many occlusions. As no correspondence is given, locally tracking 3D points across frames is hard due to noise and missing regions. Furthermore global segmentation and motion completion in presence of large occlusions is ambiguous and hard to predict. Our algorithm utilizes Gestalt principles of common fate and good continuity to compute motion tracking and completion respectively. Our technique does not assume any pre‐given markers or motion template priors. Our key‐idea is to reduce the motion completion problem to a 1D curve fitting and matching problem which can be solved efficiently using a global optimization scheme. We demonstrate our segmentation and completion method on a variety of synthetic and real world crowded scanned scenes.     

视频图像序列运动参数估计与动态拼接

本文采用多重分层叠代算法来估计全局运动参数，并提出应用于动态拼接的运动分割新方法，实现既有摄像机运动又有物体运动的视频图像序列自动拼接。我们的方法基本步骤如下：首先进行全局运动参数的初始估计，并且在分层叠代过程中进行区域分类，得到初始运动模板。接着空间分割原始图像，先根据图像的空间属性由底向上分层合并图像空间区域，再利用视频图像时间属性进一步向上合并，得到图像空间分割结果。然后结合初始运动模板和图像空间分割结果，采用区域分类新方法重新对图像空间分割结果的每个区域进行分类。然后根据分类结果逐步精确求解全局运动参数。最后进行图像合成，得到全景拼接图像。我们的方法利用了多重分层叠代的优点，并且充分考虑到视频图像空间和时间上的属性，实现了运动物体和覆盖背景的精确分割，避免了遮挡问题对全局运动参数估计精度的影响。而且在图像合成时我们解决了拼接图可能产生模糊或某些区域不连续等问题。实验结果表明我们的方法实现了动态视频图像序列高质量的全景拼接。     

基于超复视域注意模型的视频分割算法

提出一种基于超复视域注意模型的视频分割算法,无需事先针对特定类型的目标进行训练。通过构造超复视域注意帧图像,对超复视域注意帧图像计算相位相关实现运动建模,利用条件随机场对视域注意模型、颜色模型以及邻域关系模型进行约束求解,获得分割结果。采用不同的视频数据对该算法的有效性进行测试,并与其他分割算法的结果进行比较。实验结果表明,该算法的分割错误率较低。     

Computing occluding and transparent motions

Computing the motions of several moving objects in image sequences involves simultaneous motion analysis and segmentation. This task can become complicated when image motion changes significantly between frames, as with camera vibrations. Such vibrations make tracking in longer sequences harder, as temporal motion constancy cannot be assumed. The problem becomes even more difficult in the case of transparent motions.A method is presented for detecting and tracking occluding and transparent moving objects, which uses temporal integration without assuming motion constancy. Each new frame in the sequence is compared to a dynamic internal representation image of the tracked object. The internal representation image is constructed by temporally integrating frames after registration based on the motion computation. The temporal integration maintains sharpness of the tracked object, while blurring objects that have other motions. Comparing new frames to the internal representation image causes the motion analysis algorithm to continue tracking the same object in subsequent frames, and to improve the segmentation.     

Three-dimensional motion estimation via matrix completion

Three-dimensional motion estimation from multiview video sequences is of vital importance to achieve high-quality dynamic scene reconstruction. In this paper, we propose a new 3-D motion estimation method based on matrix completion. Taking a reconstructed 3-D mesh as the underlying scene representation, this method automatically estimates motions of 3-D objects. A "separating + merging" framework is introduced to multiview 3-D motion estimation. In the separating step, initial motions are first estimated for each view with a neighboring view. Then, in the merging step, the motions obtained by each view are merged together and optimized by low-rank matrix completion method. The most accurate motion estimation for each vertex in the recovered matrix is further selected by three spatiotemporal criteria. Experimental results on data sets with synthetic motions and real motions show that our method can reliably estimate 3-D motions.     

融合时域信息的修正分水岭视频分割新方法

提出一种将时域信息融入分水岭的视频分割新方法,以帧间变化检测为基础,通过运动边缘信息得到对象的初始模型,利用时域信息得到前景和背景的标识,结合提出的彩色多尺度形态学梯度算子进行分水岭分割,得到具有精确边界的视频对象,对慢变和快变的目标均有良好的效果,能够检测新出现的运动对象和现有对象的消失,能够定位和跟踪运动目标.继承了变化检测和分水岭算法速度快的优点,克服了两者易受噪声影响的缺点.