A general non-parametric technique is proposed for the analysis of a complex multimodal feature space and to delineate arbitrarily shaped clusters in it. The basic computational module of the technique is an old pattern recognition procedure: the mean shift. For discrete data, we prove the convergence of a recursive mean shift procedure to the nearest stationary point of the underlying density function and, thus, its utility in detecting the modes of the density. The relation of the mean shift procedure to the Nadaraya-Watson estimator from kernel regression and the robust M-estimators; of location is also established. Algorithms for two low-level vision tasks discontinuity-preserving smoothing and image segmentation - are described as applications. In these algorithms, the only user-set parameter is the resolution of the analysis, and either gray-level or color images are accepted as input. Extensive experimental results illustrate their excellent performance.

Mean shift: a robust approach toward feature space analysis

A common method for real-time segmentation of moving regions in image sequences involves "background subtraction", or thresholding the error between an estimate of the image without moving objects and the current image. The numerous approaches to this problem differ in the type of background model used and the procedure used to update the model. This paper discusses modeling each pixel as a mixture of Gaussians and using an on-line approximation to update the model. The Gaussian, distributions of the adaptive mixture model are then evaluated to determine which are most likely to result from a background process. Each pixel is classified based on whether the Gaussian distribution which represents it most effectively is considered part of the background model. This results in a stable, real-time outdoor tracker which reliably deals with lighting changes, repetitive motions from clutter, and long-term scene changes. This system has been run almost continuously for 16 months, 24 hours a day, through rain and snow.

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Adaptive background mixture models for real-time tracking

As one of the most successful applications of image analysis and understanding, face recognition has recently received significant attention, especially during the past several years. At least two reasons account for this trend: the first is the wide range of commercial and law enforcement applications, and the second is the availability of feasible technologies after 30 years of research. Even though current machine recognition systems have reached a certain level of maturity, their success is limited by the conditions imposed by many real applications. For example, recognition of face images acquired in an outdoor environment with changes in illumination and/or pose remains a largely unsolved problem. In other words, current systems are still far away from the capability of the human perception system.This paper provides an up-to-date critical survey of still- and video-based face recognition research. There are two underlying motivations for us to write this survey paper: the first is to provide an up-to-date review of the existing literature, and the second is to offer some insights into the studies of machine recognition of faces. To provide a comprehensive survey, we not only categorize existing recognition techniques but also present detailed descriptions of representative methods within each category. In addition, relevant topics such as psychophysical studies, system evaluation, and issues of illumination and pose variation are covered.

Face recognition: A literature survey

The goal of this article is to review the state-of-the-art tracking methods, classify them into different categories, and identify new trends. Object tracking, in general, is a challenging problem. Difficulties in tracking objects can arise due to abrupt object motion, changing appearance patterns of both the object and the scene, nonrigid object structures, object-to-object and object-to-scene occlusions, and camera motion. Tracking is usually performed in the context of higher-level applications that require the location and/or shape of the object in every frame. Typically, assumptions are made to constrain the tracking problem in the context of a particular application. In this survey, we categorize the tracking methods on the basis of the object and motion representations used, provide detailed descriptions of representative methods in each category, and examine their pros and cons. Moreover, we discuss the important issues related to tracking including the use of appropriate image features, selection of motion models, and detection of objects.

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Object tracking: A survey

A new approach toward target representation and localization, the central component in visual tracking of nonrigid objects, is proposed. The feature histogram-based target representations are regularized by spatial masking with an isotropic kernel. The masking induces spatially-smooth similarity functions suitable for gradient-based optimization, hence, the target localization problem can be formulated using the basin of attraction of the local maxima. We employ a metric derived from the Bhattacharyya coefficient as similarity measure, and use the mean shift procedure to perform the optimization. In the presented tracking examples, the new method successfully coped with camera motion, partial occlusions, clutter, and target scale variations. Integration with motion filters and data association techniques is also discussed. We describe only a few of the potential applications: exploitation of background information, Kalman tracking using motion models, and face tracking.

/pdf/kernel-based-object-tracking-2pj4gwhvr7.pdf

Kernel-based object tracking

Pfinder is a real-time system for tracking people and interpreting their behavior. It runs at 10 Hz on a standard SGI Indy computer, and has performed reliably on thousands of people in many different physical locations. The system uses a multiclass statistical model of color and shape to obtain a 2D representation of head and hands in a wide range of viewing conditions. Pfinder has been successfully used in a wide range of applications including wireless interfaces, video databases, and low-bandwidth coding.

/pdf/pfinder-real-time-tracking-of-the-human-body-1gxyo8snvf.pdf

Pfinder: real-time tracking of the human body

Pfinder is a real-time system for tracking and interpretation of people. It runs on a standard SGI Indy computer, and has performed reliably on thousands of people in many different physical locations. The system uses a multi-class statistical model of color and shape to obtain a 2-D representation of head and hands in a wide range of viewing conditions. These representations are useful for applications such as wireless interfaces, video databases, and low-bandwidth coding, without cumbersome wires or attached sensors.

/pdf/pfinder-real-time-tracking-of-the-human-body-1zz5u716zo.pdf

Presents a formulation for recursive recovery of motion, pointwise structure, and focal length from feature correspondences tracked through an image sequence. In addition to adding focal length to the state vector, several representational improvements are made over earlier structure from motion formulations, yielding a stable and accurate estimation framework which applies uniformly to both true perspective and orthographic projection. Results on synthetic and real imagery illustrate the performance of the estimator. >

Recursive estimation of motion, structure, and focal length

Interactive graphics systems that are driven by visual input are discussed. The underlying computer vision techniques and a theoretical formulation that addresses issues of accuracy, computational efficiency, and compensation for display latency are presented. Experimental results quantitatively compare the accuracy of the visual technique with traditional sensing. An extension to the basic technique to include structure recovery is discussed. >

Visually controlled graphics

Ten different feature vectors are tested in a gesture recognition task which utilizes 3D data gathered in real-time from stereo video cameras, and HMMs for learning and recognition of gestures. Results indicate velocity features are superior to positional features, and partial rotational invariance is sufficient for good performance.

Ali Azarbayejani

Papers

Pfinder: real-time tracking of the human body

Pfinder: real-time tracking of the human body

Recursive estimation of motion, structure, and focal length

Visually controlled graphics

Invariant features for 3-D gesture recognition