Front-view vehicle detection by Markov chain Monte Carlo method

In this paper, we propose a new vehicle detection approach based on Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). We mainly discuss the detection of vehicles in front-view static images with frequent occlusions. Models of roads and vehicles based on edge information are presented, the Bayesian problem's formulations are constructed, and a Markov chain is designed to sample proposals to detect vehicles. Using the Monte Carlo technique, we detect vehicles sequentially based on the idea of maximizing a posterior probability (MAP), performing vehicle segmentation in the meantime. Our method does not require complex preprocessing steps such as background extraction or shadow elimination, which are required in many existing methods. Experimental results show that the method has a high detection rate on vehicles and can perform successful segmentation, and reduce the influence caused by vehicle occlusion. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.