Proceedings of the 2008 International Conference on Wavelet Analysis and Pattern Recognition, Hong Kong, 30-31 Aug.
2008
VEHICLE DETECTION AND COUNTING FROM A VIDEO FRAME
CHOMTIP PORNPANOMCHAI, THITINUT LIAMSANGUAN,VISSAKORN VANNAKOSIT
Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Science, Mahidol University,
Rama 6 Road, Rajchatavee, Bangkok 10400, Thailand
E-MAIL: cccpp@mahidol.ac.th, u4788053@mahidol.ac.th, u4788129@mahidol.ac.th
Abstract:
The research intends to develop the vehicle detection and
counting system using image processing. Overall works are
software development of a system that requires a video stream
and capture to a video frame. They consist of the following
components: background road without any moving vehicle
and the frame with moving vehicles. The system is designed to
find the differentiation which is the moving vehicles and find
the number of moving vehicles from the video frame. The
vehicle detection and counting system consists of four major
components: 1) Image Acquisition, 2) Image Analysis, 3)
Object detection and Counting, and 4) Display Result
The experiment has been conducted in order to access the
following qualities: 1) Usability, to prove that the system can
determine vehicle detection and counting under the specific
condition lay out. 2) Efficiency, to show that the system can
work with high accuracy.
Keywords:
Vehicle detection; Vehicle counting; Digital Image
Processing; Multimedia
1. Introduction
The idea of using the video camera to count the number
of objects has been proposed as a new way of detection and
counting approach. The current detection and counting
approaches are based too much on the sensor equipment.
The use of sensor equipment to count the number of objects
has been widely spread into different kinds of industries.
Even though the equipment itself provides a benefit to the
user, there are also some disadvantages. The sensor
equipment is only used for real time - the user cannot insert
other kinds of inputs such as video file to the sensor
equipment in order to count the number of objects.
The sensor equipment also has a high cost and it is not a
multitasking tool [1]. Compared to the video camera
device, many users have now already installed video
camera devices in their offices or buildings for security. We
can use these video cameras for multitasking - not only for
security, but also as the sensor equipment. That means we
can count the number of objects or people in the detection
978-1-4244-2239-5/08/$25.00 ©2008 IEEE
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area. The users do not have to install much equipment since
we can combine the tasks together. So, the users can reduce
the cost of investment. Image processing technology can
fulfill this requirement.
Image processing is the technique which is based on the
software component that does not require special hardware.
With a typical video recording device and a normal
computer, we can create the detection and counting device.
By using the basic pattern matching theory, we can find the
number of objects in the video scene from the known size
of the object [2-6].
Few image processing key methodologies have been
applied to this project. The image differentiation is used in
the object detection process, level of difference for the
image analysis and pattern matching to find the number of
objects [7-9]. The project is still in the prototype mode. We
require more research and development in order to reduce
the system limitation and enhance the efficiency of the
system to be able to perform for a real-world application.
The topic of further enhancement will be discussed at the
end of the document.
This project is about developing an image processing
system that can detect the number of vehicle from the video
frame, which is running on specific constraints. The system
is intended to replace the sensor equipment, which has
some weak points as explained before. The system will be
created in the form of software which consists of input and
output parts. The input part accepts a data, which is an
image from a video scene. The output part is responsible for
reporting the result to the user.
2. Related work
Due to the traffic jam problem in Bangkok, the idea of
applying the technology to solving the problem has been
launched. Genius Traffic System is used to represent the
state of traffic in real time for the traveler. The system will
present the state of the main streets in Bangkok in order to
resolve the traffic problem [10]. The traveler can make the
Proceedings of the 2008 International Conference on Wavelet Analysis and Pattern Recognition, Hong Kong, 30-31 Aug. 2008
decision to choose a better way by trying to avoid streets
that have traffic jams shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1 The genius traffic system in the real life
Figure 2 The genius traffic board
The genius traffic board will be installed near main
cross-roads that usually have traffic jams. The genius traffic
board represents the traffic state in a graphic view which
shows street structure. It uses three colors to present the
traffic states, which are green, yellow and red, as shown in
Figure 2.
2.1. How the genius traffic system works
First, the detector cameras or closed circuit televisions
(CCTVs), which are installed at each point, will detect the
traffic movement. Then the data will be sent through
fiberglass cable to the computing centre.
At the computing centre, the system will determine the
traffic status by using the image processing technique. It
uses occupancy ratio to consider the traffic state.
With the occupancy ratio algorithm, the computer
system will generate a square area whose size is close to the
size of a car on the street. The detector camera will detect
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the total time for each car to run through a square. If the
total time is quite little, it means that a car can run with
speed and so there is no traffic jam. If the total time is very
much, it means that a car can only run slowly and so there
is a traffic jam occurring. The computer system will
measure the total time that the car has occupied the detector
over the time unit. For example, the time unit is 100
seconds and a car has occupied the square area for 100
seconds. This means that there is a traffic jam. The
occupancy ratio is between 0.0 and 1.0 and the related color
is shown in Table 1.
Table 1 The occupancy ratio of genius traffic system
Occupancy Ratio Color
0-0.3 Green
0.3-0.8 Yellow
0.8-1.0 Red
Finally, the result will be sent from the computing
centre back to the genius traffic board. The genius traffic
board will show the traffic state using the color result. The
traffic state is almost in real time since it takes some time to
compute and transfer the result.
3. System design
This part introduces our approach of creating a system
of vehicle detection and counting from the video frame. We
will start with the overall framework of the system and the
description of each component in the framework and the
basic understanding of the technique that we are using in
each component.
3.1. Overview of vehicle detection and counting
framework
The system consists of a normal PC which is connected
to a video camera, as shown in Figure 3. An input of the
system must be a background frame without any moving
vehicles and a foreground frame with moving objects. The
basic idea of the system is to calculate the number of
vehicles that move through the detection area from the
difference between the background frame and foreground
frame.
Proceedings of the 2008 International Conference on Wavelet Analysis and Pattern Recognition, Hong Kong, 30-31 Aug. 2008
Figure 3 The required system hardware for gathering the
input vehicles
3.2. Vehicle detection and counting system structure
chart
In this project, we make a program possible to detect
each kind of vehicles on the road which are recorded in
video file. Moreover, the program can detect the cars which
have different color, so we have to make the program that
can separate the cars which are the objects on the road. The
program contains the picture of the road that have no cars,
as a background picture and then the program can
differentiate the cars from the road and make car detection
with a captured image. After the car detection process is
done, the program will perform a counting process from car
detection and show the number of cars in the program. To
provide a better understanding and more details for each
operation of object detection and counting, we will
introduce the system structure and elaboration of how each
module is constructed.
Preparing data: This process is the input part of the
system. Before the system begins, we need to prepare our
video which records the cars on the road in the .VOB
format, but in Visual Basic6 allows a programmer that can
use the .AVI to perform the image processing, so we need
to convert the .VOB format in the DVD format to the .AVI
format file. We use a third party program to prepare the
.AVI video file. We can use the .AVI video files in our
system when the process of preparing the .AVI file format
is done. After we finish preparing file, we can use the .AVI
video file to play in the player part of our system for
capturing video as a one-frame image for image processing.
Preprocess: Preprocess is the process after we have
finished preparing input data. It uses the video file from the
player part and captures the one frame-image from video in
player part. The image that is captured and saved as the
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.BMP file will be used in the image processing part. The
image processing will detect and collect the number of cars
in the .BMP file that comes from player part.
We represent the overall components which describe
all processes of the vehicle detection and counting system
structure chart, as shown in figure 4.
Figure 4 The vehicle detection and counting system
structure chart
The framework which is shown in Figure 4 displays
overall vehicle detection and counting. It consists of four
major components; 1) Image Acquisition, 2) Image
Analysis, 3) Object Detection & Counting, and 4) Display
Result. The second level of the structure chart is the main
task that must be done in each component.
The first component is image acquisition. The processes
in this component are “video stream” which is an input
from the video camera, “single-sequence image” which
comes from capturing the video stream to single-sequence
image in one frame, “store image in buffer” which is used
to store the images in the buffer, and “display captured
image” which will show the image in picture box.
The second component is image analysis. The processes
in this component are “differentiate image” which will
traverse the whole pixels of background image and it has to
compare the RGB value of each pixel at the same time
during traversal in the differentiate image process, “store
the different RGB value” which is a process that stores the
values that come from differentiate image process and it
will store value as binary number and, “display binary
Proceedings of the 2008 International Conference on Wavelet Analysis and Pattern Recognition, Hong Kong, 30-31 Aug. 2008

image” which is used to show the image after previous
processes are done, and the image is displayed in black and
white.
The third component is vehicle detection and counting.
The processes in this component are “pattern creation”
which will create the patterns for making car detection,
“pattern matching” which uses the rules to detect the object
in the captured image and, “counting result” which is used
to show result in the image that crops each detected object
in the image.
The fourth component is display result. The process in
this component is “display result” which will show the
object number in the screen after all of previous processes
have been done.
4. System implementation
This section explains the design of input and output user
interface. The graphic of user interface will be presented
here. We will introduce how the system performs in real-
life application. We create the interface by using Visual
Basic 6, which is also used for programming.
3. The third window area displays the background
which has no cars in the image.
4. The fourth window area displays the image in which
noises are recorded and converted into 2-bit image.
5. The fifth window area displays the image which
shows the detection and counting process. All black
rectangular boxes show a location of all counted
cars.
6. The group of Multimedia buttons allows users to
control the video stream.
7. The group of text box and command button area is
used to select video file path.
8. The <Capture> button allows users to capture a
single frame from the video stream in the first
picture area.
9. The <Count> button allows the end user to start the
car detection and counting system. The user can
press this button again to recount action.
10. The <Save> button allows users to save the
captured picture in the decided destination
11. The <View Report> button and report area
allows the user to retrieve all the counting cars at the
present time and view them immediately.
12. The <Exit> button allows the user to close the
application and exit the program.

5. Experimental results

This part presents an experimentation on the vehicle

detection system, which is developed and based on the
concepts and design mentioned in the previous part. In this
system, the experiment’s results are focused on the usability
and the effectiveness of the system.

5.1 Usability proof

In this section, we will analyze the usability of capturing

and detection and counting of this system. The input data
are the cars which pass through the road. The cars move
from left to right side and also move from right to left side
too. We use the capturing process to get the single-frame
Figure 5 The user interface of vehicle detection and
images. If we activate the detection and counting process
counting system
with the captured image, it will record the result with the
number of cars in notepad which can record the data with
The first interface is designed to support the users that
time stamp property, which means that the system will
want to use their stream file as an input of the system.
record every result in the notepad with the time of
The twelve parts in the interface relevant to the user, as
activation of detection and counting processes. We will
shown in Figure 5, are as follows:
check how well the system can be used without any error.
1. The first window area displays the video stream
According to the usability proof, the captured screens
which comes from the video file.
shown in Figure 6 display the correct detection and
2. The second window area displays the frame which
counting vehicle from a capture video frame.
comes from capturing the video stream.

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Proceedings of the 2008 International Conference on Wavelet Analysis and Pattern Recognition, Hong Kong, 30-31 Aug. 2008
Figure 6 A screen showing correct detection and counting
vehicles from video frame
5.2. Effectiveness proof
In order to test all functional aspects of the system
thoroughly, we set up a test scenario which consists of 5
phases as shown below:
• Recording Video from top view
• Converting Video to .AVI file format
• Playing Video in our system
• Capturing Video in our system
• Activating the Detection and Counting from video
Moreover, the test scenario can be used as a user
guideline for using our system in the real world because it
covers all the steps necessary in order to use our system.
The details of each phase are as the following:
5.2.1. Recording video from top view
Since our system is developed for using with the web
camera or video camera which records video from top
view, we have to follow these steps. 1) We need to choose a
location that can record video from the bird eyes’ views. 2)
We need to find a location that can record video clearly. 3)
We must record video without any annoyance with video or
web camera.
5.2.2. Converting video into .AVI file format
We need to convert video by using any third party
video converter. If our program is implemented with a
video camera directly, it does not have to convert video file
before using in the system.
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5.2.3. Playing video in our system
We use a multimedia player module in our system to
open video files. It can also play, stop and pause video like
other multimedia players in the real world. For using our
multimedia player, the users have just to choose video file
and click the play button.
5.2.4. Capturing video in our system
When the multimedia player module works well, the
capturing process should be checked before going to the
image processing phase. The user has just to click the
capture button, so the system will capture the video file
which is playing in the multimedia player module, and the
images which come from capturing in the screen will be
saved in the folder automatically. The images that come
from capturing can be used for image processing
immediately.
5.2.5. Detection and counting from video frame
After the program gets video frame, the user can click
the count button to call Digital image processing method in
our system. When the process of digital image processing is
done, it will show block which covers on each car and the
result that shows the number of cars in the textbox.
Table 2 The effectiveness testing result
Testing time Total number Correct Precision
of cars counting
Afternoon 233 212 91.98%
Evening 192 185 96.35%
The effectiveness test will be done the same as that in
the previous section, but we focus on the correctness of the
final result. We had tested from different samples of video
frames which were recorded from different views to prove
that our program can be used to perform the vehicle
detection and counting not only in one place but it can also
be implemented with other cases at different time. We have
two data sets for our experiment. The first data set comes
from recording video in the afternoon and the second data
set comes from recording video in the evening. Each case
captures 51 video frames and the results of effectiveness
testing are shown in Table 2.
Proceedings of the 2008 International Conference on Wavelet Analysis and Pattern Recognition, Hong Kong, 30-31 Aug. 2008

[8] Hideo M. N.M.Charkari and Takeshi M., ”On-Line

6. Conclusion
Based on the experimental results in the previous
section, we can conclude that the correctness of result
depends on three factors: 1) The system may not
differentiate some vehicles of which the color is similar to
that of the road in the background image. 2) The system
cannot differentiate some vehicle size that is too small or
too large, such as that of bicycle, motorcycle, truck and bus.
3) The brightness of surrounding environment is one of the
three factors that can affect the result because the brightness
of environment affects the color value of each vehicle and
also that of the road. From our experiment, we can observe
that the percentage of correctness which comes from the
second data set is higher than that which comes from the
first data set because of the brightness.
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System”, http://www.forth-its.com,creation date:
unknown, last modified date: June 19, 2006, accessed
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