Space-time light field rendering

In this paper, we propose a novel framework called space-time light field rendering, which allows continuous exploration of a dynamic scene in both space and time. Compared to existing light field capture/rendering systems, it offers the capability of using unsynchronized video inputs and the added freedom of controlling the visualization in the temporal domain, such as smooth slow motion and temporal integration. In order to synthesize novel views from any viewpoint at any time instant, we develop a two-stage rendering algorithm. We first interpolate in the temporal domain to generate globally synchronized images using a robust spatial-temporal image registration algorithm followed by edge-preserving image morphing. We then interpolate these software-synchronized images in the spatial domain to synthesize the final view. In addition, we introduce a very accurate and robust algorithm to estimate subframe temporal offsets among input video sequences. Experimental results from unsynchronized videos with or without time stamps show that our approach is capable of maintaining photorealistic quality from a variety of real scenes.     

Video synchronization and its application to object transfer

In video post-production applications, camera motion analysis and alignment are important in order to ensure the geometric correctness and temporal consistency. In this paper, we trade some generality in estimating and aligning camera motion for reduced computational complexity and increased image-based nature. The main contribution is to use fundamental ratios to synchronize video sequences of distinct scenes captured by cameras undergoing similar motions. We also present a simple method to align 3D camera trajectories when the fundamental ratios are not able to match the noisy trajectories. Experimental results show that our method can accurately synchronize sequences even when the scenes are totally different and have dense depths. An application on 3D object transfer is also demonstrated.     

Camera Network Calibration and Synchronization from Silhouettes in Archived Video

In this paper we present an automatic method for calibrating a network of cameras that works by analyzing only the motion of silhouettes in the multiple video streams. This is particularly useful for automatic reconstruction of a dynamic event using a camera network in a situation where pre-calibration of the cameras is impractical or even impossible. The key contribution of this work is a RANSAC-based algorithm that simultaneously computes the epipolar geometry and synchronization of a pair of cameras only from the motion of silhouettes in video. Our approach involves first independently computing the fundamental matrix and synchronization for multiple pairs of cameras in the network. In the next stage the calibration and synchronization for the complete network is recovered from the pairwise information. Finally, a visual-hull algorithm is used to reconstruct the shape of the dynamic object from its silhouettes in video. For unsynchronized video streams with sub-frame temporal offsets, we interpolate silhouettes between successive frames to get more accurate visual hulls. We show the effectiveness of our method by remotely calibrating several different indoor camera networks from archived video streams.     

基于运动目标三维轨迹重建的视频序列同步算法

提出一种利用运动目标三维轨迹重建的视频时域同步算法.待同步的视频序列由不同相机在同一场景中同时拍摄得到,对场景及相机运动不做限制性约束.假设每帧图像的相机投影矩阵已知,首先基于离散余弦变换基重建运动目标的三维轨迹.然后提出一种基于轨迹基系数矩阵的秩约束,用于衡量不同序列子段间的空间时间对准程度.最后构建代价矩阵,并利用基于图的方法实现视频间的非线性时域同步.我们不依赖已知的点对应关系,不同视频中的跟踪点甚至可以对应不同的三维点,只要它们之间满足以下假设：观测序列中跟踪点对应的三维点,其空间位置可以用参考序列中所有跟踪点对应的三维点集的子集的线性组合描述,且该线性关系维持不变.与多数现有方法要求特征点跟踪持续整个图像序列不同,本文方法可以利用长短不一的图像点轨迹.本文在仿真数据和真实数据集上验证了提出方法的鲁棒性和性能.     

自适应权重更新的轻量级视频目标分割算法

目的 针对现有视频目标分割（video object segmentation,VOS）算法不能自适应进行样本权重更新,以及使用过多的冗余特征信息导致不必要的空间与时间消耗等问题,提出一种自适应权重更新的轻量级视频目标分割算法。方法 首先,为建立一个具有较强目标判别性的算法模型,所提算法根据提取特征的表征质量,自适应地赋予特征相应的权重;其次,为了去除冗余信息,提高算法的运行速度,通过优化信息存储策略,构建了一个轻量级的记忆模块。结果 实验结果表明,在公开数据集DAVIS2016 （densely annotated video segmentation）和DAVIS2017上,本文算法的区域相似度与轮廓准确度的均值J&F分别达到了85.8%和78.3%,与对比的视频目标分割算法相比具有明显的优势。结论 通过合理且无冗余的历史帧信息利用方式,提升了算法对于目标建模的泛化能力,使目标掩码质量更高。     

基于模糊逻辑的多相机非重叠场景的物体匹配

An approach based on fuzzy logic for matching both articulated and non-articulated objects across multiple non-overlapping field of views (FoVs) from multiple cameras is proposed. We call it fuzzy logic matching algorithm (FLMA). The approach uses the information of object motion, shape and camera topology for matching objects across camera views. The motion and shape information of targets are obtained by tracking them using a combination of ConDensation and CAMShift tracking algorithms. The information of camera topology is obtained and used by calculating the projective transformation of each view with the common ground plane. The algorithm is suitable for tracking non-rigid objects with both linear and non-linear motion. We show videos of tracking objects across multiple cameras based on FLMA. From our experiments, the system is able to correctly match the targets across views with a high accuracy.     

基于超像素联接权模型的视频分割算法

视频图像分割是图像处理领域的一个热门问题。在传统分割算法的基础上,提出了一种新的无监督的视频分割算法。该算法采用超像素对运动前景进行表示,定义联接权概念来描述超像素属于同一物体的可能性,并利用当前帧的静态特征与前后帧的关联特征进行联接权计算。为优化超像素间匹配关系的搜索,算法引入了超像素颜色特征匹配约束与运动关联性匹配约束的机制。分别在简单场景和复杂场景进行了视频分割实验,简单场景下,算法保证了较高的召回率与稳定的准确率;复杂场景下,算法完成了人群中单个人的切分。大量实验结果表明,该算法能够实现视频图像的分割,并且能有效解决过分割问题。     

基于相关系数的适用于视频拼接的帧对齐方法

为解决视频拼接中源视频在时间上不同步的问题,提出了一种视频帧对齐方法.利用图像矩阵间的相关系数特性,根据视频拼接中源视频的特点,运用运动量检测方法检测视频中不同时间点的运动量,在低运动量点运用相位相关法确定交叠区域大致范围,在高运动量点计算相关系数确定同一时间点上的对应帧图像.在对应帧的搜索过程中,使用变步长搜索算法提高搜索效率,减少搜索时间.实验中使用无标定的双摄像机采集多组视频数据,结果表明了该方法的准确性和有效性.     

Offline quality monitoring for legal evidence images in video-surveillance applications

Video-surveillance attracted an important research effort in the last few years. Many works are dedicated to the design of efficient systems and the development of robust algorithms. video compression is a very important stage in order to ensure the viability of video-surveillance systems. However, it introduces some distortions decreasing significantly the detection, recognition and identification tasks for legal investigators. Fortunately, an important effort is made in terms of standard definition for video-surveillance in order to achieve to a complete interoperability. However, quality issues are still not addressed in an appropriate way. Investigators are often facing the dilemma of selecting the best match (legal evidence) of the targeted object in the video-sequence. In this paper, we propose an offline quality monitoring system for the extraction of most suitable legal evidence images for video-surveillance applications. This system is constructed around three innovative parts: First, a robust tracking algorithm based on foveal wavelet and mean shift. Second, a no-reference quality metric based on sharpness feature. Finally, a super-resolution algorithm allowing to increase the size of the tracked object without using any information outside the image itself. The combination of the proposed algorithms allowed the construction of a quality monitoring system increasing significantly the efficiency of the legal evidence image extraction.     

Monitoring activities from multiple video streams: establishing acommon coordinate frame

Monitoring of large sites requires coordination between multiple cameras, which in turn requires methods for relating events between distributed cameras. This paper tackles the problem of automatic external calibration of multiple cameras in an extended scene, that is, full recovery of their 3D relative positions and orientations. Because the cameras are placed far apart, brightness or proximity constraints cannot be used to match static features, so we instead apply planar geometric constraints to moving objects tracked throughout the scene. By robustly matching and fitting tracked objects to a planar model, we align the scene's ground plane across multiple views and decompose the planar alignment matrix to recover the 3D relative camera and ground plane positions. We demonstrate this technique in both a controlled lab setting where we test the effects of errors in the intrinsic camera parameters, and in an uncontrolled, outdoor setting. In the latter, we do not assume synchronized cameras and we show that enforcing geometric constraints enables us to align the tracking data in time. In spite of noise in the intrinsic camera parameters and in the image data, the system successfully transforms multiple views of the scene's ground plane to an overhead view and recovers the relative 3D camera and ground plane positions     

高动态场景的图像融合优化和实时应用

目的：由于照相机不能采集到很宽的亮度范围,过度曝光和曝光不足现象普遍存在,尤其对于高动态(HDR)场景。图像融合技术能够解决这一问题,但是由于算法大多过于复杂,难以实现高效的处理速度,只适合对静态图像做处理。本文针对图像融合算法进行了多种优化,并提出使用图像融合技术来解决视频中的曝光问题。方法：我们对图像融合算法进行测试,对块融合的方法做了有效的优化来提升算法效率,并且将优化后的算法嵌入到实时监控系统中,通过曝光控制模块与融合技术相结合,实现了实时融合的视频采集系统。结果：对高动态场景的测试表明,视频中的每一帧均能采集到整个场景中的所有信息,并且不会存在曝光问题。结论：本文针对图像融合方法提出了多种优化和加速策略,并独创性地将其应用于实时视频采集中。实验结果表明,即使是高动态场景中,也可以将几乎所有信息都保留下来,不受曝光问题的干扰。     

一种改进的摄像头视频实时拼接方法

针对普通摄像头水平视角较小的问题,通过同时采集具有一定重叠区域的摄像头视频帧图像,基于尺度不变特征变换（ScaleInvariantFeatureTransform,SIFT）特征点,用二分哈希搜索算法（DichotomyBasedHash,DBH）进行匹配,用随机采样一致（RandomSampleConsensus,RANSAC）算法消除误匹配,得到帧图像拼接映射关系。实验结果表明,该方法能有效地实现摄像头视频实时拼接,克服了既有方法在重叠区域小于20％时失效的不足,在重叠区域为10％左右时仍能取得有效的拼接。     

基于自适应可分离卷积核的视频压缩伪影去除算法

针对目前视频质量增强和超分辨率重建等任务中常采用的光流估计相关算法只能估计像素点间线性运动的问题，提出了一种新型多帧去压缩伪影网络结构。该网络由运动补偿模块和去压缩伪影模块组成。运动补偿模块采用自适应可分离卷积代替传统的光流估计算法，能够很好地处理光流法不能解决的像素点间的曲线运动问题。对于不同视频帧，运动补偿模块预测出符合该图像结构和像素局部位移的卷积核，通过局部卷积的方式实现对后一帧像素的运动偏移估计和像素补偿。将得到的运动补偿帧和原始后一帧联结起来作为去压缩伪影模块的输入，通过融合包含不同像素信息的两视频帧，得到对该帧去除压缩伪影后的结果。与目前最先进的多帧质量增强（MFQE）算法在相同的训练集和测试集上训练并测试，实验结果表明，峰值信噪比提升（ΔPSNR）较MFQE最大增加0.44 dB，平均增加0.32 dB，验证了所提出网络具有良好的去除视频压缩伪影的效果。     

Structural similarity-based object tracking in multimodality surveillance videos

This paper addresses the problem of object tracking in video sequences for surveillance applications by using a recently proposed structural similarity-based image distance measure. Multimodality surveillance videos pose specific challenges to tracking algorithms, due to, for example, low or variable light conditions and the presence of spurious or camouflaged objects. These factors often cause undesired luminance and contrast variations in videos produced by infrared sensors (due to varying thermal conditions) and visible sensors (e.g., the object entering shadowy areas). Commonly used colour and edge histogram-based trackers often fail in such conditions. In contrast, the structural similarity measure reflects the distance between two video frames by jointly comparing their luminance, contrast and spatial characteristics and is sensitive to relative rather than absolute changes in the video frame. In this work, we show that the performance of a particle filter tracker is improved significantly when the structural similarity-based distance is applied instead of the conventional Bhattacharyya histogram-based distance. Extensive evaluation of the proposed algorithm is presented together with comparisons with colour, edge and mean-shift trackers using real-world surveillance video sequences from multimodal (infrared and visible) cameras.     

Pose estimation from multiple cameras based on Sylvester’s equation

In this paper, we introduce a method to estimate the object’s pose from multiple cameras. We focus on direct estimation of the 3D object pose from 2D image sequences. Scale-Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) is used to extract corresponding feature points from adjacent images in the video sequence. We first demonstrate that centralized pose estimation from the collection of corresponding feature points in the 2D images from all cameras can be obtained as a solution to a generalized Sylvester’s equation. We subsequently derive a distributed solution to pose estimation from multiple cameras and show that it is equivalent to the solution of the centralized pose estimation based on Sylvester’s equation. Specifically, we rely on collaboration among the multiple cameras to provide an iterative refinement of the independent solution to pose estimation obtained for each camera based on Sylvester’s equation. The proposed approach to pose estimation from multiple cameras relies on all of the information available from all cameras to obtain an estimate at each camera even when the image features are not visible to some of the cameras. The resulting pose estimation technique is therefore robust to occlusion and sensor errors from specific camera views. Moreover, the proposed approach does not require matching feature points among images from different camera views nor does it demand reconstruction of 3D points. Furthermore, the computational complexity of the proposed solution grows linearly with the number of cameras. Finally, computer simulation experiments demonstrate the accuracy and speed of our approach to pose estimation from multiple cameras.     

前景判别的局部模型匹配目标跟踪

目的 在复杂背景下,传统模型匹配的跟踪方法只考虑了目标自身特征,没有充分考虑与其所处图像的关系,尤其是目标发生遮挡时,易发生跟踪漂移,甚至丢失目标。针对上述问题,提出一种前景判别的局部模型匹配(FDLM)跟踪算法。方法 首先选取图像帧序列前m帧进行跟踪训练,将每帧图像分割成若干超像素块。然后,将所有的超像素块组建向量簇,利用判别外观模型建立包含超像素块的目标模型。最后,将建立的目标模型作为匹配模板,采用期望最大化(EM)估计图像的前景信息,通过前景判别进行局部模型匹配,确定跟踪目标。结果 本文算法在前景判别和模型匹配等方面能准确有效地适应视频场景中目标状态的复杂变化,较好地解决各种不确定因素干扰下的跟踪漂移问题,和一些优秀的跟踪算法相比,可以达到相同甚至更高的跟踪精度,在Girl、Lemming、Liquor、Shop、Woman、Bolt、CarDark、David以及Basketball视频序列下的平均中心误差分别为9.76、28.65、19.41、5.22、8.26、7.69、8.13、11.36、7.66,跟踪重叠率分别为0.69、0.61、0.77、0.74、0.80、0.79、0.79、0.75、0.69。结论 实验结果表明,本文算法能够自适应地实时更新噪声模型参数并较准确估计图像的前景信息,排除背景信息干扰,在部分遮挡、目标形变、光照变化、复杂背景等条件下具有跟踪准确、适应性强的特点。     

Principal axis-based correspondence between multiple cameras for people tracking

Visual surveillance using multiple cameras has attracted increasing interest in recent years. Correspondence between multiple cameras is one of the most important and basic problems which visual surveillance using multiple cameras brings. In this paper, we propose a simple and robust method, based on principal axes of people, to match people across multiple cameras. The correspondence likelihood reflecting the similarity of pairs of principal axes of people is constructed according to the relationship between "ground-points" of people detected in each camera view and the intersections of principal axes detected in different camera views and transformed to the same view. Our method has the following desirable properties; 1) camera calibration is not needed; 2) accurate motion detection and segmentation are less critical due to the robustness of the principal axis-based feature to noise; 3) based on the fused data derived from correspondence results, positions of people in each camera view can be accurately located even when the people are partially occluded in all views. The experimental results on several real video sequences from outdoor environments have demonstrated the effectiveness, efficiency, and robustness of our method.     

Continuous localization and mapping of a pan–tilt–zoom camera for wide area tracking

Pan–tilt–zoom (PTZ) cameras are well suited for object identification and recognition in far-field scenes. However, the effective use of PTZ cameras is complicated by the fact that a continuous online camera calibration is needed and the absolute pan, tilt and zoom values provided by the camera actuators cannot be used because they are not synchronized with the video stream. So, accurate calibration must be directly extracted from the visual content of the frames. Moreover, the large and abrupt scale changes, the scene background changes due to the camera operation and the need of camera motion compensation make target tracking with these cameras extremely challenging. In this paper, we present a solution that provides continuous online calibration of PTZ cameras which is robust to rapid camera motion, changes of the environment due to varying illumination or moving objects. The approach also scales beyond thousands of scene landmarks extracted with the SURF keypoint detector. The method directly derives the relationship between the position of a target in the ground plane and the corresponding scale and position in the image and allows real-time tracking of multiple targets with high and stable degree of accuracy even at far distances and any zoom level.     

基于时空域信息融合的视频拷贝检测算法研究

为了有效利用视频独有的时空域特性来提高视频拷贝检测算法的鲁棒性和精度,提出一种基于时空域信息融合的快速拷贝检测算法。该算法包括基于时空域信息融合的指纹提取算法、基于倒排索引的匹配搜索算法和结合异步滑窗策略的基于匹配状态机的匹配搜索算法。指纹提取算法首先将视频分段形成时空域信息帧,然后对该信息帧进行分块,提取DCT系数后,利用其中值进行阈值化得到视频指纹。基于倒排索引的搜索算法根据指纹的二值性特点建立倒排索引表,然后通过索引表快速查询指纹。结合异步滑窗策略的基于匹配状态自动机的搜索算法,利用与最近邻之间的匹配状态来改变搜索范围和步长,而异步滑窗策略通过对在线和离线过程采用不同的提取策略,减少搜索量,加快搜索速度。实验结果表明,提取的指纹对噪声模糊、添加字幕、空间偏移、旋转、掉帧具有较好的鲁棒性,同时提出的搜索方案在时间效率上也有较大的提升。     

Key Frame Extraction of Surveillance Video based on Moving Object Detection and Image Similarity

For the traditional method to extract the surveillance video key frame, there are problems of redundant information, substandard representative content and other issues. A key frame extraction method based on motion target detection and image similarity is proposed in this paper. This method first uses the ViBe algorithm fusing the inter-frame difference method to divide the original video into several segments containing the moving object. Then, the global similarity of the video frame is obtained by using the peak signal to noise ratio, the local similarity is obtained through the SURF feature point, and the comprehensive similarity of the video image is obtained by weighted fusion of them. Finally, the key frames are extracted from the critical video sequence by adaptive selection threshold. The experimental results show that the method can effectively extract the video key frame, reduce the redundant information of the video data, and express the main content of the video concisely. Moreover, the complexity of the algorithm is not high, so it is suitable for the key frame extraction of the surveillance video.