Spatial color histogram based center voting method for subsequent object tracking and segmentation

In this paper, we introduce an algorithm for object tracking in video sequences. In order to represent the object to be tracked, we propose a new spatial color histogram model which encodes both the color distribution and spatial information. Using this spatial color histogram model, a voting method based on the generalized Hough transform is employed to estimate the object location from frame to frame. The proposed voting based method, called the center voting method, requests every pixel near the previous object center to cast a vote for locating the new object center in the new frame. Once the location of the object is obtained, the back projection method is used to segment the object from the background. Experiment results show successful tracking of the object even when the object being tracked changes in size and shares similar color with the background. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.