Active mesh for video segmentation and objects tracking

The new MPEG-4 standard will provide superior services for the user, as it introduces the video objects concept. However, there is no generic segmentation technique able to provide the segmentation maps for such a coding system. In this paper, we propose a novel mesh-based video segmentation and objects tracking algorithm with both robust motion estimation and modeling of motion discontinuities. In addition, occlusions and uncovered regions are well managed. This allows the mesh deformation without the need to process remeshing in motion occlusion regions. The spatial properties of each frame are considered to make the mesh edges fit the image contents and a temporal smoothness constraint is also implemented. The proposed algorithm is able to segment multiple objects at the same time. Some experimental results are shown.