Counting vehicles in urban traffic scenes using foreground time-spatial images

A foreground time-spatial image (FTSI) is proposed for counting vehicles in complex urban traffic scenes to resolve deficiencies of traditional counting methods, which are highly computationally expensive and become unsuccessful with increasing complexity in urban traffic scenarios. First, a self-adaptive sample consensus background model with confidence measurements for each pixel is constructed on the virtual detection line in the frames of a video. The foreground of the virtual detection line is then collected over time to form a FTSI. The occlusion cases are then estimated based on the convexity of connected components. Finally, counting the number of connected components in the FTSI reveals the number of vehicles. Based on real-world urban traffic videos, the experiments in this study are conducted using FTSI, and compared in accuracy with two other time-spatial images methods. Experimental results based on real-world urban traffic videos show that the accuracy rate of the proposed approach is above 90% and it performs better than the state-of the-art methods.