Patent · US Active

Bitmap tracker for visual tracking under very general conditions

US8027513B2 · kind B2 · utility

8Cited by
10References
16Claims
0Family size

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Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateMar 23, 2007
Grant dateSep 27, 2011
Priority date
Expiry dateJun 27, 2030

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC G)Physics
  • CPC primaryG06T7/277
  • WIPO fieldComputer technology
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

System and method for visually tracking a target object silhouette in a plurality of video frames under very general conditions. The tracker does not make any assumption about the object or the scene. The tracker works by approximating, in each frame, a PDF (probability distribution function) of the target's bitmap and then estimating the maximum a posteriori bitmap. The PDF is marginalized over all possible motions per pixel, thus avoiding the stage in which optical flow is determined. This is an advantage over other general-context trackers that do not use the motion cue at all or rely on the error-prone calculation of optical flow. Using a Gibbs distribution with a first order neighborhood system yields a bitmap PDF whose maximization may be transformed into that of a quadratic pseudo-Boolean function, the maximum of which is approximated via a reduction to a maximum-flow problem.

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.