Detection of Moving Objects Using Fuzzy Color Difference Histogram Based Background Subtraction

Detection of moving objects in the presence of complex scenes such as dynamic background (e.g, swaying vegetation, ripples in water, spouting fountain), illumination variation, and camouflage is a very challenging task. In this context, we propose a robust background subtraction technique with three contributions. First, we present the use of color difference histogram (CDH) in the background subtraction algorithm. This is done by measuring the color difference between a pixel and its neighbors in a small local neighborhood. The use of CDH reduces the number of false errors due to the non-stationary background, illumination variation and camouflage. Secondly, the color difference is fuzzified with a Gaussian membership function. Finally, a novel fuzzy color difference histogram (FCDH) is proposed by using fuzzy c-means (FCM) clustering and exploiting the CDH. The use of FCM clustering algorithm in CDH reduces the large dimensionality of the histogram bins in the computation and also lessens the effect of intensity variation generated due to the fake motion or change in illumination of the background. The proposed algorithm is tested with various complex scenes of some benchmark publicly available video sequences. It exhibits better performance over the state-of-the-art background subtraction techniques available in the literature in terms of classification accuracy metrics like MCC and PCC.