Small moving object detection in video sequences

In this paper, we propose a method for detection of small moving objects in video. We first eliminate the camera motion using motion compensation. We then use an adaptive predictor to estimate the current pixel using neighboring pixels in the motion compensated image and, in this way, obtain a residual error image. Small moving objects appear as outliers in the residual image and are detected using a statistical Gaussianity detection test based on higher order statistics. It turns out that in general, the distribution of the residual error image pixels is almost Gaussian. On the other hand, the distribution of the pixels in the residual image deviates from Gaussianity in the existence of outliers. Simulation examples are presented.