Online multiple people tracking-by-detection in crowded scenes

Multiple people detection and tracking is a challenging task in real-world crowded scenes. In this paper, we have presented an online multiple people tracking-by-detection approach with a single camera. We have detected objects with deformable part models and a visual background extractor. In the tracking phase we have used a combination of support vector machine (SVM) person-specific classifiers, similarity scores, the Hungarian algorithm and inter-object occlusion handling. Detections have been used for training person-specific classifiers and to help guide the trackers by computing a similarity score based on them and spatial information and assigning them to the trackers with the Hungarian algorithm. To handle inter-object occlusion we have used explicit occlusion reasoning. The proposed method does not require prior training and does not impose any constraints on environmental conditions. Our evaluation showed that the proposed method outperformed the state of the art approaches by 10% and 15% or achieved comparable performance.