AN IMPROVED BACKGROUND SUBTRACTION ALGORITHM AND CONCURRENT IMPLEMENTATIONS

Abstract

This paper proposes a concurrent implementation of a background subtraction algorithm suitable for monochromatic video sequences. In the training period, a set of frames is used to determine an estimate of the scene background, as well as background noise. In the test period, each new frame of the video sequence is compared to the background model, and foreground objects are obtained taking into account the background noise estimate. Shadows and highlights are also detected and removed. Concurrent programming tools and techniques, such as multithreading, are used to implement a concurrent solution for this problem, and combined with other optimization tools (such as destination word accumulation for morphological operators and the use of lookup tables for shadow detection/removal) to achieve the highest frame rate possible. Experimental results comprise a comparison of the performance including progressively each optimization tool, and they show that the fully optimized algorithm is much faster than a naive sequential implementation. Also, experiments performed on two-way processor and on dual-core processor computers indicate that the proposed algorithm is suited for the recent multi-core technology.