Fast automatic detection of wildlife in images from trap cameras

Abstract

Photo-identification of naturally marked animals is a nonintrusive technique for obtaining valuable information regarding population size and behavior in the wilderness of endangered species. In this paper we present a method for detecting/cutting wild felines in pictures taken with trap-cameras installed in the forest and triggered by infrared sensors. The detection of these felines serves the purpose of collecting information useful in studies about the population size or the migration phenomena. We propose computing the difference of images from the same trap-cameras within a short period of time. According to our experiments, our method is fast, reliable and robust, this method can be used for other species with different pelage patterns.