• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea CI
• /
• v.47 no.1
• /
• pp.22-29
• /
• 2010

A real-time detection and tracking of moving objects in video sequences is very important for smart surveillance systems. In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm for the detection of moving objects that is the entropy-based adaptive Gaussian mixture model (AGMM). First, the increment of entropy generally means the increment of complexity, and objects in unstable conditions cause higher entropy variations. Hence, if we apply these properties to the motion segmentation, pixels with large changes in entropy in moments have a higher chance in belonging to moving objects. Therefore, we apply the Clausius entropy theory to convert the pixel value in an image domain into the amount of energy change in an entropy domain. Second, we use an adaptive background subtraction method to detect moving objects. This models entropy variations from backgrounds as a mixture of Gaussians. Experiment results demonstrate that our method can detect motion object effectively and reliably.

• ETRI Journal
• /
• v.32 no.5
• /
• pp.750-760
• /
• 2010

We propose a homology between thermodynamic systems and images for the treatment of time-varying imagery. A physical system colder than its surroundings absorbs heat from the surroundings. Furthermore, the absorbed heat increases the entropy of the system, which is closely related to its disorder as given by the definition of Clausius and Boltzmann. Because pixels of an image are viewed as a state of lattice-like molecules in a thermodynamic system, the task of reckoning the entropy variations of pixels is similar to estimating their degrees of disorder. We apply this homology to the uncalibrated stereo matching problem. The absence of calibrations alleviates user efforts to install stereo cameras and enables users to freely modify the composition of the cameras. The proposed method is also robust to differences in brightness, white balancing, and even focusing between stereo image pairs. These peculiarities enable users to estimate the depths of interesting objects in practical applications without much effort in order to set and maintain a stereo vision setup. Users can consequently utilize two webcams as a stereo camera.