Object tracking and segmentation in a closed loop

Abstract

We introduce a new method for integrated tracking and segmentation of a single non-rigid object in an monocular video, captured by a possibly moving camera. A closed-loop interaction between EM-like color-histogram-based tracking and Random Walker-based image segmentation is proposed, which results in reduced tracking drifts and in fine object segmentation. More specifically, pixel-wise spatial and color image cues are fused using Bayesian inference to guide object segmentation. The spatial properties and the appearance of the segmented objects are exploited to initialize the tracking algorithm in the next step, closing the loop between tracking and segmentation. As confirmed by experimental results on a variety of image sequences, the proposed approach efficiently tracks and segments previously unseen objects of varying appearance and shape, under challenging environmental conditions. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.