Motion detection via change-point detection for cumulative histograms of ratio images

Motion detection is widely used as the key module for moving object extraction from image frames. In most of the motion detection methods, backgrounds are subtracted from captured images. This is called background subtraction. As standard intensity can be expressed as the multiplication of illumination and reflectance, illumination changes will produce a poor difference image from background subtraction and affect the accuracy of motion detection. In this paper, we use ratio images as the basis for motion detection. For thresholding the target images, we propose change-point detection for cumulative histograms to prevent the difficulties of searching peaks and valleys in histograms. Experimental results show that change-point detection of cumulative histograms performs very well for thresholding the target images. In addition, the superiority of motion detection based on ratio images to motion detection based on difference images is also depicted in experimentation. (c) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.