A contour tracking method using an elastic contour model and an energy‐minimization approach

Abstract

AbstractThis paper proposes a method for tracking an object contour in a sequence of images. In this method, a contour model is defined by elastics. The contour tracking problem is formulated as an optimization problem to find the position that minimizes both the elastic energy of its model and the potential energy derived from the edge potential image that includes a target object contour. The contour model is updated sequentially according to the tracking result in the previous frame.In the proposed approach, the contour model not only moves toward the object contour in the current frame, but also preserves the shape of the tracked contour in the previous frame. Therefore, the proposed method makes it possible to establish object tracking even when complex texture and occluding edges exist in or near the target object. Moreover, in this method, since smooth potential fields extending over a long distance are generated by distance transformation, unlike conventional methods, long‐range motion tracking can be performed.An algorithm is newly presented which efficiently solves energy minimization problems. The validity and usefulness of the proposed method is shown with some experimental results.