A background subtraction algorithm for detecting and tracking vehicles

An innovative system for detecting and extracting vehicles in traffic surveillance scenes is presented. This system involves locating moving objects present in complex road scenes by implementing an advanced background subtraction methodology. The innovation concerns a histogram-based filtering procedure, which collects scatter background information carried in a series of frames, at pixel level, generating reliable instances of the actual background. The proposed algorithm reconstructs a background instance on demand under any traffic conditions. The background reconstruction algorithm demonstrated a rather robust performance in various operating conditions including unstable lighting, different view-angles and congestion. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.