Automatic extraction and tracking of the tongue contours

Computerized analysis of the tongue surface movement can provide valuable information to speech and swallowing research. Ultrasound technology is currently the most attractive modality for the tongue imaging mainly because of its high video frame rate. However, problems with ultrasound imaging, such as noise and echo artifacts, refractions, and unrelated reflections pose significant challenges for computer analysis of the tongue images and hence specific methods must be developed. This paper presents a system that is developed for automatic extraction and tracking of the tongue surface movements from ultrasound image sequences. The ultrasound images are supplied by the head and transducer support system (HATS), which was developed in order to fix the head and support the transducer under the chin in a known position without disturbing speech. In this work, we propose a novel scheme for the analysis of the tongue images using deformable contours. We incorporate novel mechanisms to 1) impose speech related constraints on the deformations; 2) perform spatiotemporal smoothing using a contour postprocessing stage; 3) utilize optical flow techniques to speed up the search process; and 4) propagate user supplied information to the analysis of all image frames. We tested the system's performance qualitatively and quantitatively in consultation with speech scientists. Our system produced contours that are within the range of manual measurement variations. The results of our system are extremely encouraging and the system can be used in practical speech and swallowing research in the field of otolaryngology.     

Active contours for video object tracking using region, boundary and shape information

In this paper, we propose a robust model for tracking in video sequences with non-static backgrounds. The object boundaries are tracked on each frame of the sequence by minimizing an energy functional that combines region, boundary and shape information. The region information is formulated by minimizing the symmetric Kullback–Leibler (KL) distance between the local and global statistics of the objects versus the background. The boundary information is formulated using a color and texture edge map of the video frames. The shape information is calculated adaptively to the dynamic of the moving objects and permits tracking that is robust to background distractions and occlusions. Minimization of the energy functional is implemented using the level set method. We show the effectiveness of the approach for object tracking in color, infrared (IR), and fused color-infrared sequences.     

Nonstationary autoregressive modeling of object contours

A spatially variant circular autoregressive (SVCAR) model is introduced for the analysis and classification of closed shape boundaries. The model represents a closed shape boundary sequence as the output of a nonstationary all-pole linear system (driven by white noise) whose coefficient's spatial evolution can be expressed as a truncated function expansion. Features derived from the SVCAR model are shown to be invariant to shape scaling, rotation, and translation. A shape-matching algorithm is developed to optimally adjust the SVCAR model coefficients for changes in contour sequence starting point. Laboratory experiments involving object sets representative of industrial, military, and geographic shapes are presented. Superior classification results are demonstrated     

Active contours for tracking distributions

A new approach to tracking using active contours is presented. The class of objects to be tracked is assumed to be characterized by a probability distribution over some variable, such as intensity, color, or texture. The goal of the algorithm is to find the region within the current image, such that the sample distribution of the interior of the region most closely matches the model distribution. Two separate criteria for matching distributions are examined, and the curve evolution equations are derived in each case. The flows are shown to perform well in experiments.     

Tracking nonparameterized object contours in video

We propose a new method for contour tracking in video. The inverted distance transform of the edge map is used as an edge indicator function for contour detection. Using the concept of topographical distance, the watershed segmentation can be formulated as a minimization. This new viewpoint gives a way to combine the results of the watershed algorithm on different surfaces. In particular, our algorithm determines the contour as a combination of the current edge map and the contour, predicted from the tracking result in the previous frame. We also show that the problem of background clutter can be relaxed by taking the object motion into account. The compensation with object motion allows to detect and remove spurious edges in background. The experimental results confirm the expected advantages of the proposed method over the existing approaches.     

Automatic video object generation tool: segmentation and tracking of persons in real time

In the field of the multimedia applications, future standards as mpeg4 or mpeg7 allow new image content representation that goes far from the basic compression. This way, the objects of interest become entities that the user can manipulate. Nevertheless, the norm does not specify how objects have to be segmented, even if in some cases this is a complex task. In the framework of the European project m4m (mpeg fo(u)r Mobiles, Medea project Al 16), we have in charge the development of a demonstrator able to segment and track a speaker in videophone and vidéoconférence applications.     

基于运动跟踪匹配技术的视频对象提取

本文提出一种自动分割VOP的技术。其方法是：先对初始帧使用形态运动滤波技术提取出初始运动对象的二值轮廓模型,并在后继帧中使用豪斯道夫对象跟踪器跟踪运动以对象模型;而为了适应对象的形状变化,本文使用活动轮廓模型（snake）技术对运动心合匹配;最后根据一系列精确的二值轮廓引导提取运动对象序列。实验结果表明,我们的算法可有效地提取视频对象平面。     

Joint audio-video object localization and tracking

There has been a tremendous amount of research on object localization either involving microphone arrays or video cameras. Considerable less attention has been paid, however, to object localization and tracking based on joint audio-video processing thus far. This may be related to the lack of suitable algorithms for object localization simultaneously using multimicrophone outputs and color image sequences. In this article, we propose a solution to this problem. Before elaborating on joint audio-video processing, we review some previous work the areas of audio and video object localization. Then a recursive sensor fusion method based on decentralized Kalman filtering is introduced. Unfortunately, the decentralized Kalman filter cannot be directly used for joint audio-video object localization due to specific properties of the audio sensor. By properly adjusting the local audio position estimator, however, we manage to keep the overall architecture. We stress the general methodology     

动态目标实时跟随及其预测算法应用研究

实时成像跟踪系统要求对运动目标能够有较快的响应速度,跟踪的响应时间越短,系统的实时性就越好,从而可靠的跟踪系统显得尤为重要。文中在研究了目前常用几种跟踪算法的基础上,提出了一种基于目标特征匹配和Kalman预测相结合的跟踪方法,选取目标的灰度直方图信息做为特征匹配模板,使用Kalman滤波器对目标在下一帧图像中可能出现的位置进行预测,在预测范围内进行搜索及模板匹配,实验结果表明,该跟踪算法能够对目标实现稳定可靠的跟踪。     

目标实时跟踪与预测算法研究

实时成像跟踪系统要求对运动目标能够有较快的响应速度,跟踪的响应时间越短,系统的实时性就越好,从而可靠的跟踪系统显得尤为重要。文中在研究了目前常用几种跟踪算法的基础上,提出一种基于目标特征匹配和Kalman预测相结合的跟踪方法,选取目标的灰度直方图信息做为特征匹配模板,使用Kalman滤波器对目标在下一帧图像中可能出现的位置进行预测,在预测范围内进行搜索及模板匹配,实验结果表明,该跟踪算法能够对目标实现稳定可靠的跟踪。     

具有遮挡鲁棒性的目标中心距离加权的跟踪算法

本文提出了一种实时跟踪算法,以目标中心距离加权的目标图像直方图作为模板,采用mean-shift迭代方法进行目标定位;当目标被部分遮挡时,用"分块匹配"的方法提高算法鲁棒性;对于超过一定像素的较大目标,本算法进行"降采样",大大减小运算量,从而实现了对大尺度目标的实时跟踪.实时视频流的实际跟踪系统验证了该方法的有效性.     

结合目标预估计与Mean Shift理论的运动目标跟踪算法

图像的运动包括目标、背景和平台的运动,复杂的运动关系增加了目标跟踪的难度.提出了一种有效的基于Mean Shift理论的运动目标跟踪算法.为提高算法的实时性,对Mean Shift算法的核函数进行了改进,使得加减运算替代乘方和浮点运算,大大提高了运算效率;并通过对迭代权值的改进,强化了初始模板的主要信息,提高了算法跟踪与背景相似目标的能力;采用自动更新模板的策略,克服了目标特征分布发生改变的问题;在此基础上,引入了目标预检测,提出了综合背景差分检测的运动目标跟踪算法,实验表明:该算法在目标被遮挡情况下具有较强的适应性.     

Tri-tracking method for robust object tracking

A novel tri-tracking method for tracking objects is proposed. The tracker trains three support vector machines with labelled frames, in which an object is represented using three independent feature histograms. Based on the confidence map created by each classifier, the object position is given by the mean shift. Experiments on several video sequences show the robustness and accuracy of the proposed method.     

Active-matting-based object tracking with color cues

The linear canonical transform (LCT) has been shown to be a useful and powerful analyzing tool in optics and signal processing. Many results of this transform are already known, including its uncertainty principles (UPs). The existing UPs of the LCT for complex signals can only provide sharp bounds with LCT parameters satisfying $a_1/b_1\ne a_2/b_2$ . However, in most cases, we strive to find a lower bound, but not a sharper bound, since a lower bound often leads to optimization problems in signal processing applications. In this paper, we first present a much briefer and more transparent derivation to obtain a general uncertainty principle of the LCT for arbitrary signals via operator methods. Then, we derive lower bounds of three UPs of the LCT for complex signals, which are tighter lower bounds than the existing ones. We also prove that the derived results hold for arbitrary LCT parameters.     

Video object segmentation and tracking using region-based statistics

Two new region-based methods for video object tracking using active contours are presented. The first method is based on the assumption that the color histogram of the tracked object is nearly stationary from frame to frame. The proposed method is based on minimizing the color histogram difference between the estimated objects at a reference frame and the current frame using a dynamic programming framework. The second method is defined for scenes where there is an out-of-focus blur difference between the object of interest and the background. In such scenes, the proposed “defocus energy” can be utilized for automatic segmentation of the object boundary, and it can be combined with the histogram method to track the object more efficiently. Experiments demonstrate that the proposed methods are successful in difficult scenes with significant background clutter.     

Performance measures for video object segmentation and tracking

We propose measures to evaluate quantitatively the performance of video object segmentation and tracking methods without ground-truth (GT) segmentation maps. The proposed measures are based on spatial differences of color and motion along the boundary of the estimated video object plane and temporal differences between the color histogram of the current object plane and its predecessors. They can be used to localize (spatially and/or temporally) regions where segmentation results are good or bad; and/or they can be combined to yield a single numerical measure to indicate the goodness of the boundary segmentation and tracking results over a sequence. The validity of the proposed performance measures without GT have been demonstrated by canonical correlation analysis with another set of measures with GT on a set of sequences (where GT information is available). Experimental results are presented to evaluate the segmentation maps obtained from various sequences using different segmentation approaches.     

复杂背景下运动目标的检测与跟踪

比较了HS和LK两种光流计算方法的性能,并针对复杂背景的情况,提出了一种基于LK光流柱状图和canny边缘检测融合技术的运动目标检测跟踪方法.该方法分三步:首先,利用LK光流柱状图信息完成运动目标的检测,并获得目标分割图;然后用canny边缘检测算子的检测信息并融合目标分割图信息获得细化的目标边缘图;最后根据检测结果计算目标形心.实验表明,该方法能有效解决复杂背景下运动目标的检测与跟踪.     

Automatic detection of myocardial contours in cine-computed tomographic images

Quantitative evaluation of cardiac function from cardiac images requires the identification of the myocardial walls. This generally requires the clinician to view the image and interactively trace the contours. This method is susceptible to great variability that depends on the experience and knowledge of the particular operator tracing the contours. The particular imaging modality that is used may also add tracing difficulties. Cine-computed tomography (cine-CT) is an imaging modality capable of providing high quality cross-sectional images of the heart. CT images, however, are cluttered, i.e., objects that are not of interest, such as the chest wall, liver, stomach, are also visible in the image. To decrease this variability, investigators have developed computer-assisted or near-automatic techniques for tracing these contours. All of these techniques, however, require some operator intervention to confidently identify myocardial borders. The authors present a new algorithm that automatically finds the heart within the chest, and then proceeds to outline (detect) the myocardial contours. Information at each tomographic slice is used to estimate the contours at the next tomographic slice, thus allowing the algorithm to work in near-apical cross-sectional images where the myocardial borders are often difficult to identify. The algorithm does not require operator input and can be used in a batch mode to process large quantities of data. An evaluation and correction phase is included to allow an operator to view the results and selectively correct portions of contours. The authors tested the algorithm by automatically identifying the myocardial borders of 27 cardiac images obtained from three human subjects and quantitatively comparing these automatically determined borders with those traced by an experienced cardiologist.     

Automatic detection of brain contours in MRI data sets

A software procedure is presented for fully automated detection of brain contours from single-echo 3-D MRI data, developed initially for scans with coronal orientation. The procedure detects structures in a head data volume in a hierarchical fashion. Automatic detection starts with a histogram-based thresholding step, whenever necessary preceded by an image intensity correction procedure. This step is followed by a morphological procedure which refines the binary threshold mask images. Anatomical knowledge, essential for the discrimination between desired and undesired structures, is implemented in this step through a sequence of conventional and novel morphological operations, using 2-D and 3-D operations. A final step of the procedure performs overlap tests on candidate brain regions of interest in neighboring slice images to propagate coherent 2-D brain masks through the third dimension. Results are presented for test runs of the procedure on 23 coronal whole-brain data sets, and one sagittal whole-brain data set. Finally, the potential of the technique for generalization to other problems is discussed, as well as limitations of the technique