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Abstract
The real-time vehicle detection from a traffic scene is the major process in image processing based traffic data collection
and analysis techniques. The most common algorithm used for real-time vehicle detection is based on background
differencing and thresholding operations. The efficiency of this method of image detection is heavily dependent on the
background updating and threshold selection techniques. In this paper, a new background updating and a dynamic threshold
selection technique is presented. An alternative image detection technique used in image processing is based on edge
detection techniques. However, an edge detector extracts the edges of the objects of a scene irrespective of whether it
belongs to the background details or the objects. Therefore, to separate these two, extra information is required. We have
developed a new image detection method based on background differencing and edge detection techniques, which separates
the objects from their backgrounds and works well under various lighting and weather conditions. This image detection
technique together with other techniques for calculating traffic parameters e.g. counting number of vehicles, works in
real-time on an 80386-based microcomputer operating at a clock speed of 33 MHz.
1. Introduction
In recent years, extensive research and development efforts have been devoted to image processing
techniques applied to traffic data collection and analysis (Hoose, 1991, 1992). For real-time traffic image
processing applications, the sequence of images have
to be processed at a rate of 25 frames/second, which
produces a large amount of data. Therefore, the
image processing algorithms have to be simple but
effective so that they can be executed in real-time.
* Corresponding author. Email: emysiyal@ntu.ac.sg
SSDI 0 1 6 7 - 8 6 5 5 ( 9 5 ) 0 0 0 8 1 - X
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2. Background updating
Bpt = K B p t _ 1 + (1 - K )
Cpt_l,
(1)
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(don't update)
(update)
Table 1
Dpl >/T1
Dp2>/T2
Updating background
Object detected
Status of the trafficat
the pixel to be tested
No
No
Yes
No
Empty road
No
Yes
No
No
Motion (vehicle
leaving the scene)
Yes
No
No
Yes
Stopped
objects
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Moving
objects
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200
20O
17S
175
150
~.50
(a)
(b)
[O(S(f)) - g ( s ( f ) ) ]
(2)
where S(f) is the result of applying a separable
SMED =
0.8 .
" /ZI!I11171
0.5---
0.4
1.'66
2:5
-~t-- open-dose
F i g . 2. P e r f o r m a n c e
comparison
srned ede
( 3 x 3).
095 ........... ~
o~54
To compare the performance of the SMED operator with other edge detectors, a test pattern employed
by other researchers to evaluate the performance of
similar detectors has been used. The test pattern is a
checker board comprising of dark and light squares
with grey-values of 50 and 100 respectively. To
measure the performance of different operators, noise
with gaussian distribution of zero mean and different
standard deviations was added to the test pattern.
The criterion used to compare the operators was
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~stnalt~n~atla
open-close - 4 - - ATM
- ~ - blur-rain
- ~ - smed-ede
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= l-ea~
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suitable for real-time applications. The proposed algorithm has been applied on full-frame and
window-based image detection techniques using a
DT2867 (Data Translation Manual, 1993) frame
grabber board and an 80386 microcomputer system.
The DT2867 board allows the capture of more than 4
frames/second which is suitable for our applications. It has got special hardware for convolution-type
operations, which were not used in our application.
As stated earlier, the difference of two consecutive frames is used for motion detection and updating
operations. As shown in Table 1, if Dp2 is greater
than T2, a motion is detected for that point. Now, if
the number of moving points in an area is significant, a motion condition is detected, otherwise a stop
condition is detected in the area. Therefore, it can be
said that the proposed algorithm can be used for a
wide range of full-frame or window-based image-detection and motion-detection techniques.
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(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
Fig. 8. Operations of the proposed image detection technique.
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7. Results
8. Conclusion
The problems associated with the backgroundbased image detection techniques are mainly due to
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the variations of ambient lighting and threshold selection operations. In this paper an effective background updating technique based on automatic estimation of the ambient lighting changes and automatic selection of the pixels which should be updated is introduced. This selective-averaging updating technique has the advantages of the two most
commonly used updating techniques, i.e., averaging
and selective, while it eliminates the disadvantages
of these two algorithms. We also implemented a
dynamic threshold selection technique, which can be
used for both local and global thresholding schemes.
The proposed image detection technique has been
tested under various lighting conditions and satisfactory results have been achieved.
In some situations a more robust image detection
technique, which is not sensitive to the variations of
ambient lighting, is preferable to a low-cost image
detection technique. In those applications, a combined edge detection and background differencing
technique can be used. A low-cost approach to this
method using the morphological edge detection in
conjunction with the proposed background updating
technique is implemented. This algorithm has been
used in a wide range for full-frame and window-based
applications in real-time. The information computed
during the operation of the proposed algorithm is
also used for vehicle detection and motion detection,
without imposing significant extra computational
cost. This combination was used to eliminate the
edges of unimportant parts of roads, like shadows of
the trees, stopped cars, white road markings etc.
At present work is underway to extend the proposed vehicle-detection algorithm to calculate other
traffic parameters such as speed of vehicles, type of