Pixel Statistics and False Alarm Area in Genetic Programming for Object Detection

Abstract

This paper describes a domain independent approach to the use of genetic programming for object detection problems. Rather than using raw pixels or high level domain specific features, this approach uses domain independent statistical features as terminals in genetic programming. Besides position invariant statistics such as mean and standard deviation, this approach also uses position dependent pixel statistics such as moments and local region statistics as terminals. Based on an existing fitness function which uses linear combination of detection rate and alarm rate, we introduce a new measure called false alarm to the fitness function. In addition to the standard arithmetic operators, this approach also uses a conditional operator if in the function set. This approach is tested on two object detection problems. The experiments suggest that position dependent pixel statistics computed from local (central) regions and nonlinear condition functions are effective to object detection problems. Fitness functions with alarm area can reflect the smoothness of evolved genetic programs. This approach works well for the detecting small regular multiple class objects on a relatively uncluttered background.