Moving Object Detection Algorithms

1. Introduction
Detecting regions that correspond to moving objects in a video sequence plays a very important role in many computer vision applications. Object detection from video sequence is the process of detecting the moving objects in the frame sequence using digital image processing techniques. Moving object detection is the basis of moving object identification and tracking. Although a lot of studies have been conducted in recent years the subject is still challenging. Moving object detection becomes challenging due to several reasons such as Loss of information caused by the 3D world on a 2D image Noise in images Complex object motion Non-rigid or articulated nature of objects Partial or full object occlusions Complex object shapes Scene illumination changes

Dept of C S & E, B.I.E.T.,Davanagere

Page 1

Moving Object Detection Algorithms

2. Difficulties in moving object detection and tracking

Tracking of detected moving object in an image sequence is a significant and difficult task. It is a crucial part of smart surveillance system, since without tracking; the system could not extract cohesive temporal information about objects and higher level behavior analysis steps could not be possible. On the other hand, due to occlusions and reflections tracking becomes a difficult research problem. Most tracking systems often fail under some situations. This could be either because of illumination changes, pose variations or occlusions. Therefore the need for automatic performance evaluation emerges in these applications. Short and long term dynamic scene changes such as repetitive motions (e.g. waiving tree leaves), light reflectance, shadows, camera noise and sudden illumination variations make reliable and fast moving object detection difficult. Hence, it is important to pay necessary attention to object detection step to have reliable, robust and fast visual surveillance system.

Dept of C S & E, B.I.E.T.,Davanagere

Page 2

Moving Object Detection Algorithms

3. Introduction to Normalized Cross Correlation (NCC) Algorithm

Normalized cross correlation (NCC) algorithm is based on finding the cross correlation between two consecutive frames in an image sequence. Correlation is basically used to find the similarity between two frames. If the two consecutive frames are exactly same, then the value of Normalized cross correlation is maximum. In that case no moving object is detected. Now suppose there is a moving object in the image sequence, means the two consecutive frames are no exactly same, with respect to positions of the pixel values. In that case the value of Normalized cross correlation is less than maximum value obtained. This concept of Normalized cross correlation is used for the detection of moving object in an image sequence.

Dept of C S & E, B.I.E.T.,Davanagere

Page 3

Moving Object Detection Algorithms

4. Theory of NCC (Normalized Cross Correlation)

Correlation is mainly used for measuring similarity between two images. It is useful in feature recognition and registration. Normalized cross correlation is given by equation (1).

In this, A and B indicates average pixel value in image A and B respectively. r is normalized with respect to both the images and it always lies in the range [-1, 1].

Dept of C S & E, B.I.E.T.,Davanagere

Page 4

Moving Object Detection Algorithms

5. System Overview
Basic steps involved in the process are given in figure 1. As shown, input image sequence is taken from the static camera. Two consecutive frames from the image sequence are partitioned into four quadrants. Then moving object detection takes place after finding Normalized Cross Correlation between two partitioned frames. Moving Object detection in video involves verifying the presence of an object in image sequence and possibly locating it precisely for recognition. After detecting the moving object, the location of the moving object is obtained by performing component connected analysis. Tracking of the detected moving object takes place by calculating the centroids of the detected moving object. Tracking means the detection of a target over time, thus establishing its trajectory. The aim of object tracking is to establish a correspondence between objects or object parts in consecutive frames and to extract temporal information about objects such as trajectory, posture, speed and direction.

Dept of C S & E, B.I.E.T.,Davanagere

Page 5

Moving Object Detection Algorithms

Dept of C S & E, B.I.E.T.,Davanagere

Page 6

Moving Object Detection Algorithms

6. Algorithm
Basic algorithm steps for the detection and tracking of moving objects are given below. Read two consecutive frames from the image sequence called as current frame and previous frame. Divide these frames into four quadrants. For ex: Current frame is divided into four parts called as x1, x2, x3 and x4. Similarly, previous frame is divided into four parts called as y1, y2, y3 and y4. Now find out the NCC of each sub image of current frame with the previous frame. After this there are four values of NCC, called as c1, c2, c3 and c4. Now find out the minimum value of NCC from these four values. To this minimum value of NCC apply the threshold. The threshold value is selected by taking average of four NCC values (i.e. c1, c2, c3 and c4).

Suppose the minimum value of NCC is obtained at the first quadrant, it means that the moving object is present in that quadrant. Now operate in the first quadrant. Take the difference between the first quadrants of two consecutive frames.

Dept of C S & E, B.I.E.T.,Davanagere

Page 7

Moving Object Detection Algorithms

Then find the location of the moving object by performing component connected analysis and morphological processing. Centroid calculation is done for tracking the moving object. After this the second minimum value from the c1, c2, c3 and c4 is obtained. This is performed to check whether any other moving object is present in other part of the image. If the second minimum value is also greater than threshold then it means that the moving object is present in that quadrant. Now, identify the location of second moving object and track that object. Repeat the same procedure for the next frame.

Dept of C S & E, B.I.E.T.,Davanagere

Page 8

Moving Object Detection Algorithms

7. Performance Evaluation
Performance Evaluation for moving object detection and tracking is given in terms of Qualitative analysis Quantitative analysis Time performance analysis.

7.1.1 Qualitative analysis

The most reliable approach for qualitative/visual evaluation is to display a flicker animation, a short movie file containing a registered pair of images (I1(x), I2(x)) that are played in rapid succession at intervals of about a second each. Also qualitative/visual evaluation is to display the sequence to point the tracking of the detected moving object. Moving object detection and tracking results are shown from figure 2 to 9. Tracking results are shown by a pointer. For the sequence shown in figure 2, a person is moving from left to right. It is pointed by a star. Similarly for different image sequences, different pointers are used. Figure 3 shows the tracking sequence of a car. Figure 4, 5 and 6 shows the tracking sequence of multiple objects. (i.e. fishes). In this image sequence the shape of fish undergoes sudden deformation. (i.e. non rigid movement). In the same image sequence repetitive motion (water) and variation in illumination is observed. Hence such motion is difficult to track. As observed in figure 4 SD method fails in detecting and tracking fish sequence. But as observed in figure 6, PNCC method provides better tracking results.

Dept of C S & E, B.I.E.T.,Davanagere

Page 9

Moving Object Detection Algorithms

Figure 7 shows the image sequence of a walking person. In this the walking person is pointed by a square. As shown in figure 8, some part of the image sequence is very bright and the other part is in the shadow. There are two moving objects. These are pointed by square. Figure 9 shows image sequence of two moving objects. This image sequence is of low contrast and low brightness, with two moving objects. These moving objects are pointed by stars.

Dept of C S & E, B.I.E.T.,Davanagere

Page 10

Moving Object Detection Algorithms

Dept of C S & E, B.I.E.T.,Davanagere

Page 11

Moving Object Detection Algorithms

7.1.2 Quantitative analysis

This is the process of establishing the correct answer for what exactly the algorithm is expected to produce. [17] [18]. There are two metrics for characterizing the Detection Rate (DR) and the False Alarm Rate (FAR) of the system. These rates, used to quantify the output of the system, are based on: Moving object can be detected (positive) or not detected (negative) and a decision for a detection result can be either correct (true) or incorrect (false). A decision for a detection result therefore will be one of these possible categories as mentioned below. TP (true positive): detected regions that correspond to moving objects, FP (false positive): detected regions that do not correspond to a moving object, (also known as false alarms). FN (false negative): moving objects not detected. (also known as misses). These scalars are combined to define the following metrics: DR = TP / (TP +FN) (2) FAR = FP / (TP+FP) (3) TP, FP and FN values for different image sequences are shown in Table 1. There are three values for TP and FN for S2 image sequence. It means there are three moving objects in S2 image sequence. Similarly for S4 and S11 image sequence, two moving objects are present.

7.1.3 Time performance analysis

Temporal performances are evaluated by estimating how many CPU seconds the system takes to process an image of a sequence, which is the average processing time per frame.

Dept of C S & E, B.I.E.T.,Davanagere

Page 12

Moving Object Detection Algorithms

Table 1. TP , FP and FN of different image Sequences.

From the obtained values of TP, FP and FN, Detection rate and False alarm rate obtained, as shown in Table 2.

Table 2. DR and FAR For Different Image Sequences.

Dept of C S & E, B.I.E.T.,Davanagere

Page 13

Moving Object Detection Algorithms

8. Performance of Moving Object Detection methods

The performance of all detection methods are summarized below in table 4.

Table 3 : Performance of moving object detection methods Detection Methods

Frame difference

Detecting time/seconds
38.08

Recognition rates
92.9%

False positives
8

Background subtraction Frame difference and Edge detection Normal cross correlation (NCC)

90.34

98.4%

1.873

99.2%

7.65

95%

Dept of C S & E, B.I.E.T.,Davanagere

Page 14

Moving Object Detection Algorithms

9. Conclusion
An algorithm is proposed by Partitioning and Normalized Cross Correlation for the detection and tracking of moving object from the image sequence. Important advantage of this algorithm is that it requires very less preprocessing of the frames from image sequence (median filtering and contrast stretching). The algorithm is robust against changes in illumination and lighting conditions. In poor lighting conditions also the algorithm is giving better results. Here also we have summarized moving object detection algorithms for detecting moving objects in video sequences from current literature. In this survey the pros and cons of the algorithms considered and tabulated. The performance of various object detection methods was also compared.

Dept of C S & E, B.I.E.T.,Davanagere

Page 15

Moving Object Detection Algorithms

10. Bibliography
1. CSI-Communications Volume No 33 Issue No 11 February 2010. 2. A Novel approach to Detect and Track Moving Object using Partitioning and Normalized Cross Correlation by Manoj S. Nagmode, Mrs. Madhuri A. Joshi, Ashok.M.Sapkal. .

3. A Contour-Based Moving Object Detection and Tracking by Masayuki Yokoyama and Tomaso Poggio.

Websites
www.csi-india.org www.icgst.com www.IEEE.org

Dept of C S & E, B.I.E.T.,Davanagere

Page 16