Application of Panoramic Annular Lens for Motion Analysis Tasks: Surveillance and Smoke Detection

In this paper some applications of motion analysis are investigated for a compact panoramic optical system (Panoramic Annular Lens). Panoramic image acquisition makes multiple or mechanically controlled camera systems needless for many applications. Panoramic Annular Lens’ main advantage to other omnidirectional monitoring systems is that it is a cheap, small, compact device with no external hyperboloidal, spherical, conical or paraboloidal reflecting surface as in other panoramic optical devices. By converting the annular image captured with an NTSC camera to a rectangular one, we get a low-resolution (cc. 2.8 pixels/degree horizontally and 3 pixels/degree vertically) image. We have developed algorithms, which can analyze this low-resolution image to yield motion information for surveillance and smoke detection.