2014 IEEE International Symposium on Multimedia
A High Performance Object Tracking Technique with
An Adaptive Search Method In Surveillance System
Tsung-Han Tsai
Dept. of Electrical Engineering
National Central University
Taoyuan County 320, Taiwan (ROC)
han@ee.ncu.edu.tw
Abstract— In the video scene, the technique on tracking
multiple targets, such as tracking group of people through
occlusion, is still challenging. In this paper, we present an
algorithm for multiple targets tracking system. We discuss the
behavior of the moving objects with adaptive search method.
Several cases are classified, including the no match case, only-one
match case, split case and occlusion case respectively. With this
system, we can track the moving people in successive frame by
object boundary box and velocity without color cues or
appearance model. Even though people are interacted with each
other or the occlusion is caused by other foreground objects, the
proposed algorithm can still perform well. Furthermore we
consider the people movement with respect to the distance with
the camera as an adaptive search range to deal with the condition.
As the foreground is similar to the background, the proposed
algorithm can still solve the problem on the detection error.
Keywords—object tracking; surveillance system; object
grouping;
I. INTRODUCTION
In a surveillance system, the system transmits video,
stationary cameras extracting, to central server by wires or
wireless. The traditional surveillance networks rely on labor
diagnose the activities on monitor. But there is a limit on the
amount of monitor which human can handle. Human is also
easily distracted by the ambient environments changing. That
causes the important events easily missing or erroneous
judgment.
The intelligent surveillance system means that it is capable
of automatically multiple information extraction and analysis.
Following the development of intelligent surveillance systems,
the systems observably reduce the cost of human resource. In
this kind of system, the object tracking technique has received
more and more attention in recent years, due to the drive from
many emerging applications. To match and detect multiple
foreground objects between consecutive frames, it can be used
by different features of object such as shape, velocity, color,
texture. Tracking is the process to track the objects over the
time by locating its position in every frame of the video
Tracking single human or a small group of humans for passing
is always existed with occlusion. Moreover, in video scene
tracking group of people, which have been through occlusion,
is still challenging.
978-1-4799-4311-1/14 $31.00 © 2014 IEEE
978-0-7695-5437-2/14
DOI 10.1109/ISM.2014.50
Chih-Hao Chang
Dept. of Electrical Engineering
National Central University
Taoyuan County 320, Taiwan (ROC)
hao130@dsp.ee.ncu.edu.tw
When people are interacted with each other or the occlusion
is caused by other foreground objects, the tracking problem is
occurred with occlusions, One solution for occlusions problem
is utilizing multiple views to compensate for the insufficiency
visibility of a single view [1]. However multiple views are not
always available for some applications. A popular solution
strategy for detecting and tracking multiple people in
surveillance situations is the use of probabilistic appearance
models [2]-[4], which use probabilistic models to characterize
these people as the appearance and localization model to track
the target. Some method performs segmented objects and
explicit tracking using Kalman filter [5], [6]. W4 in [7] is a
tracking system based on shape analysis for the surveillance.
These methods always have to extract the feature or establish
model from object and thus take complex computation.
To be applied in the surveillance system, in this paper we
present a high performance object tracking technique to deal
with the occlusion problem. We utilize the object boundary
box, and record the object velocity. By this information we can
preserve the identity of an object across a sequence of frame.
This paper is organized as follows. Section II presents the
overall algorithm. Some experimental results are shown in
Section III. Conclusions are provided in Section IV finally.
II. OVERALL OF THE PROPOSED SYSTEM
The main goal of the proposed method is to track multiple
targets. At first, Multi-model Background Maintenance (MBM)
algorithm is used to extract moving blob [8]. Based on the
previous research works [9], we use the approach with a
combination of run-length encoding (RLC) and object labeling
of algorithms. Labeling procedure gives a label value on each
object. The small area objects will be considered as noise. The
proposed tracking algorithm is shown in Fig. 1. Object
grouping and object tracking are discussed later.
A. Object grouping
When the pixel characteristics of a foreground object are
too similar to the background, it is hard to discern between
foreground and background. For example, when a person is
wearing a cloth, this situation presents a similar color or pixel
illumination to the background. It causes the foreground
detection fault. As shown in Fig. 2(a), the foreground objects
are incorrectly considered as background pixels. Then one
353
 /DEHO'DWD problem, there are different object tracking methods proposed.
Veenman et al. [10] propose a point tracking algorithm. It is
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robust, reliable and accurate tracking method, but it requires
deterministic or probabilistic methods. Most of the previous
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works on tracking of people have relied heavily on color cues
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or appearance model such as kernel tracking [5]. In [11], they
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object box to deal with occlusions and splits. After the
0DQ\WR2QH connected component labeling and object grouping, we have
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0HUJHGLQDXQLTXHREMHFW performance tracking algorithm to deal with occlusions and
DQGXSGDWHODEHO (VWDEOLVKQHZREMHFW splits without object color cues or appearance model. The
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RFFOXVLRQ algorithm flow chart is shown in Fig. 1.
2QHWR0DQ\ When grouping the fragment blobs into an actual blob is
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the objects of the current frame. Then we match the object
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ODEHODQGHVWLPDWHWKHORFDWLRQ pairs with correspondence. The matching method can be
C t = {C 1t ,..., Cnt }
described as follow. There is a set of object
t −1 t −1 t −1
8SGDWHWKHREMHFWODEHODQG blobs in frame t and a set P = {P 1 ,..., Pm } of object blobs
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in previous frame t-1. Since the moving objects have a small
amount of movement in successive frame, we can match the
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object by follow equation
Fig. 1: Flowchart of the proposed tracking algorithm.
Cxtn − Pxtm−1 < Cwtn / 2
Cy nt − Py mt −1 < Chnt / 2
object may label into plural objects such as Fig. 2(b). The
errors, caused by the fragmentation of the actual object in the where Cxtn and Cy tn are center of object blob of Cnt . Px tm−1
scene, are detected and corrected by a grouping phase
performed on the basis of a model of the shape to be and Pymt −1 are center of object blob Pmt −1 . Cwtn and Chnt are
recognized. Here we present an object grouping algorithm to width and height object blob of Cnt respectively. With this
merge the fragment blobs into an actual object blob. We have a
set G = {G1, … , G݊ } of object blobs. We compare each object adaptive threshold for the similarity measure between object
blobs centroid is in search range or not. If the distance of two blobs, we can have four different conditions. As shown in Fig.
3, we can classify object into match or no match. There are
object center Gx n is under Gwn / 2 and the distance of two
three conditions of match object, including the only-one match
object center Gy n is under Ghn , we should merge two object case, split case and occlusion case respectively.
As shown in Fig. 4, if there is no match object pair, we give
into an object blob. Where Gx n and Gy n are centroid of object
the new object new label value. The blob’s velocity is
Gn , and Gwn and Ghn are width and height object blob of Gn ,
2QO\RQHPDWFK
respectively. As in Fig. 2(c), three fragment blobs are merged 7UDFNLQJ 0DWFK
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into an actual object blob.

B. Object tracking 1RPDWFK 6SOLWFDVH

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Fig. 3: Cases of none match and only-one match pairs.

(a) (b) (c) recorded from its values in the previous frames as
1 n
Fig. 2: An example of object grouping: (a) foreground segmentation result,
Vo(i ) = ¦ Vo(t − m ) (i )
(b) object blob without grouping and (c) object grouping result. n m =1
Object tracking is aimed at tracking the identity of an object
Vo(i )
across a successive of frames with small groups of people where is the estimated velocity of the i-th object in the
moving together or interacting with each other. In these cases, image frame at time t. There are two pairs of object matched
individual people are not visually isolated, and could be in Fig. 5. In this case there is a matching between object blob
partially or total occluded by other people. To solve this Cnt and object blob Pmt −1 . Here we adopt the object Pmt −1 label

354
 Fig. 4: Case of on match pair
Fig. 5: Case of only-one match pairs.
value and update velocity in previous n frame. When an object
splits in the frame t such as Fig. 6, it is a many-to-one case. It
means an object on the frame t-1 splits with two or more
objects on the frame t. We can match two or more objects on
frame t to the one object on frame t-1.In this case a procedure
to resolve the split is applied. We have to merge two objects
into a unique object as shown in Fig. 7. We adopt the object
label value in previous n frame and update the velocity.
Fig. 8 shows a one-to-many case, whether two objects are
interacting with each other in frame t. This is the case when
the occlusion occurs: two or more objects on the frame –Ǧͳ
Fig. 6: Case of split problem.
Object blob in Frame t
Object blob in Frame t-1
Object center in Frame t
Object center in Frame t-1
Fig. 7: Merge two objects into a unique object.
merge into a one object on the frame ‫ݐ‬. In this case a
procedure to resolve the occlusion is applied. We can utilize
the object label value and velocity in previous frame to
estimate the location in frame t as Fig. 9. A real example with
two people is located as shown in Fig. 10.
III. EXPRIMENTAL RESULTS
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Fig. 8: Case of occlusion problem.
Fig. 9: Utilizing the object label value and velocity in previous frame.
(a) (b) (c)
Fig. 10: An example of two people interacting with each other: (a) foreground
segmentation result, (b) object blob without procedure and (c) tracking result
To demonstrate the proposed system, we take the
experiment for several video sequences. These video sequences
are from PETS2010 dataset and an indoor sequence [12]. In
order to track the moving object such as human and car, we use
different color to identify different object. As shown in Fig. 11,
people are occulted by digital number. As shown in Fig. 12,
people are interacting with each other and consequently the
occlusion case is occurred. In our experiment result, people are
tracked and located in successive frame well in these cases. In
view007 sequences, we can see that when people are in front of
camera, the people are larger than the other people in the
distance, and they also have large amount of movement as the
situation. If a fixed threshold such as [11] is used, some object
tracking results are not well as shown in Fig. 13.The proposed
algorithm is an adaptive search range match method which can
track the people well as shown in Fig.14. Referring to the
precision on tracking result, we evaluate the correspondence
match accuracy and list it in TABLE I. In average the accuracy
is above 94%.
TABLE I. CORRESPONDENCE MATCH ACCURACY
PETS2010 PETS2010
Indoor sequence
view001 view007
Correspondence
89.3% 98.3% 96.1%
match accuracy
IV. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, a high performance tracking algorithm used
on the surveillance system was designed. With this system, we
can track multiple moving objects in successive frame by
object blobs and velocity without color cues or appearance
model even though people are interacting with each other, or
the occlusion is caused by other foreground objects. Because of
 Fig.11: Tracking result for people is occulted by digital number case.

Fig. 12: Tracking result for people is interacting with each other case.

Fig. 13. Tracking result for PETS2010 dataset view 007 by fixed threshold..

Fig. 14: Tracking result for PETS2010 dataset view 007 by proposed method.

the relationship on the distance with the camera and the people
are in front of camera, people have more amount of movement.
This derives the adaptive search range in our algorithm to deal
with the occlusion condition well. Moreover the object
grouping method also can solve the problem of foreground
detection fault when foreground is similar to background.
Simulation results show that more than 94% of these
correspondence match accuracy is achieved.
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