Parametric active contours for object tracking based on matching degree image of object contour points

A parametric active contour model is presented for object tracking based on matching degree image of object contour points. We first construct a matching degree image according to object contour points, and track the object using parametric active contours. This paper presents a new feature matching approach and a new directional filter. Assuming that the motion of objects is small in this paper, we constrain the motion of object contour within the contour vicinity defined by a band, which is constructed by the generation method of narrow band of level set method. Experimental results demonstrate that our method can effectively track rigid and non-rigid objects. We apply the proposed tracking method for face tracking, outer contour segmentation of left ventricle magnetic resonance (MR) images, and brain stem segmentation of Chinese visible human datasets, which demonstrates that our method is feasible for practical applications. 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.