Image segmentation for human tracking using sequential-image-based hierarchical adaptation

We propose a novel method of extracting a moving object region from each frame in a series of images regardless of complex, changing background using statistical knowledge about the target. In vision systems for 'real worlds' like a human motion tracker, a priori knowledge about the target and environment is often limited (e.g., only the approximate size of the target is known) and is insufficient for extracting the target motion directly. In our approach, information about both target object and environment is extracted with a small amount of given knowledge about the target object. Pixel value (color, intensity, etc.) distributions for both the target object and background region are adaptively estimated from the input image sequence based on the knowledge. Then, the probability of each pixel being associated with the target object is calculated. The target motion can be extracted from the calculated stochastic image. We confirmed the stability of this approach through experiments.