Region Tracking through Image Sequences

This paper describes a new approach to the tracking of complex shapes through image sequences, that combines deformable region models and deformable contours. A new deformable region model is presented: its optimisation is based on texture correlation and is constrained by the use of a motion model, such as rigid, aane or homographic. The use of texture information (versus edge information) noticeably improves the tracking performances of deformable models in the presence of texture. Then the region contour is reened using an edge-based deformable model, in order to better deal with specularities and non planar objects. The method is illustrated and validated by experimental results on real images. We would like to thank Gerard Medioni for his suggestions and advice during the progress of this work, and Andrew Blake and Andrew Zisserman for their help with the writing of this article. Suivi de r egions sur une s equence d'images R esum e : Ce rapport d ecrit une nouvelle approche de suivi de formes complexes sur une s equence d'images, qui combine les mod eles d eformables de r egion et de contours. Un nouveau mod ele d eformable de r egion est pr esent e: son optimisation est bas ee sur la corr elation des niveaux de gris, et est contrainte par un mod ele de mouvement, tel que rigide, aane ou homographique. L'utilisation de l'information donn ee par les niveaux de gris (par rapport a l'information de contour) am eliore notablement les performances de suivi des mod eles d eformables en pr esence de texture. Ensuite le contour de la r egion est raan e par un contour d eformable, de mani ere a corriger les erreurs dus aux sp ecularit es et a la non-planarit e des objets. La m ethode est illustr ee par des r esultats exp erimentaux sur des images r eelles. Region tracking through image sequences 3 Summary 1. What is the original contribution of this work? This paper describes a new deformable model for region tracking, and presents a tracking approach that combines deformable regions and deformable contours. Previous deformable models found in the literature are either edge-nding curves or homogeneity-maximising regions. In contrast, this paper presents a deformable model for the tracking of regions based on texture correlation. Furthermore, other works that aim to use region information rely on a pre-computation of the region or contour optical ow for providing …