A real-time score detection and recognition approach for broadcast basketball video

For broadcast sports video, score information is an effective mid-level representation to facilitate high-level video content analysis. In this paper, we propose a real-time approach to detect score region and recognize scores in broadcast basketball video. First, score region is automatically detected using frame difference and texture information without any prior knowledge. Then, score digit is recognized using a coarse-to-fine scheme based on score spatial structure, temporal correlation and changing rules. Compared with traditional video text recognition method, our approach is computing-insensitive and independent of digit model training. Experimental results show that our approach achieves real-time performance and is robust for the variation of digit font, size, color and noise caused by low frame resolution in broadcast basketball video.