Effective method for tracking multiple objects in real-time visual surveillance systems

An object model-based tracking method is useful for tracking multiple objects, but the main difficulties are modeling objects reliably and tracking objects via models in successive frames. An effective tracking method using the object models is proposed to track multiple objects in a real-time visual surveillance system. Firstly, for detecting objects, an adaptive kernel density estimation method is utilized, which uses an adaptive bandwidth and features combining colour and gradient. Secondly, some models of objects are built for describing motion, shape and colour features. Then, a matching matrix is formed to analyze tracking situations. If objects are tracked under occlusions, the optimal “visual” object is found to represent the occluded object, and the posterior probability of pixel is used to determine which pixel is utilized for updating object models. Extensive experiments show that this method improves the accuracy and validity of tracking objects even under occlusions and is used in real-time visual surveillance systems.