MCSHM: A simple and practical method for moving objects detection in dynamic scenes

Abstract

Moving objects' detection in dynamic scenes is a very important task in video processing. In the applications of image processing (for example, video-surveillance), more attention is paid to whether there is an interested object in the scene rather than where the object is located. As a matter of fact, similar to static backgrounds, the statistical histograms of the most dynamic backgrounds have favorable stability, and these histograms would change clearly only when big and contrasting objects enter or move out of the scenes. This is a very important and interesting property for dynamic background. We propose a fast and simple algorithm, combining histograms in multiple color spaces and the superposition principle of statistical histogram, called Multiple Color Space Histogram Models (MCSHM). MCSHM first calculates statistical histograms of many color components in multiple color space and then use the changes of statistical histograms to determine whether there is an object rather than the changes in pixels or pixel-level regions. Thus, the computational complexity of MCSHM is kept at a very low level. The basic steps are as follows: firstly, convert each frame from RGB space to other color spaces and calculate the histograms of selected color components, then we can obtain the background histogram model; secondly, detect the objects using statistical histogram superposition principle; finally, update MCSHM by the result of detection. The experimental results demonstrate that our method can quickly and accurately detect moving objects in dynamic scenes.