Detecting obstructions and tracking moving objects by image processing technique

In this paper, a method is described for updating the background image corresponding to the environment changing the illumination conditions significantly and for detecting obstructions and tracking of moving vehicles on the road. In the proposed method, the varying region in the monitoring image is derived from the background difference and time difference and is classified into (a) moving objects, (b) stationary objects, and (c) the change due to illumination variation. Based on this classification, region (c) and the region without any change are used for background updating. Also, by forming the a cumulative image in which the binary images composed of regions (a) and (b) are stored for a specified length of time, the detection of the stationary objects is performed and the traffic conditions are determined. For tracking of moving objects, first the DCT is used so that the images consisting only of the moving object and excluding shadow are extracted. Next, these images are used as the template and are tracked by matching. The present method was applied to three types of video images. It was found that all of the 10 stationary vehicles contained in the image were detected. Also, a high accuracy of 93% was accomplished for the tracking of moving objects in the case of daytime images. (C) 1999 Scripta Technica.