Signal Processing 81 (2001) 1017}1040

Advanced image-processing tools for counting people in tourist

site-monitoring applications夽
Claudio Sacchi, Gianluca Gera, Lucio Marcenaro, Carlo S. Regazzoni*
Department of Biophysical and Electronic Engineering (DIBE), University of Genoa, Via Opera Pia 11/A, I-16145, Genova, Italy
Received 13 April 2000; received in revised form 4 December 2000

Abstract

This work aims at demonstrating the usefulness of exploiting novel image-processing tools for moving-object detection
and classi"cation in the context of an actual application involving the remote monitoring of a tourist site. The application
concerns outdoor people counting for tourist-#ow estimation in a constrained environment. The technical problems to
be solved are concerned with: (a) the design and implementation of low-complexity background updating and change
detection algorithms able to adapt themselves to the time-varying illumination scene conditions, and (b) the integration
of real-time pattern-recognition tools in order to distinguish group of persons to be counted from other objects present in
the scene. The achieved results have proven that the proposed system makes it possible to obtain reliable people counting
in di!erent environmental situations, with an absolute mean error at most equal to 10%.  2001 Elsevier Science B.V.
All rights reserved.

1. Introduction considerable amount of related R&D activities re-

In the last years, the e!ective development of
automatic people-counting systems based on
digital signal-processing techniques aroused a
considerable interest of research in electronics and
information science. Such interest is proven by the
夽
This work was partially supported by the Italian Ministry
for the University and Scienti"c and Technical Research
(MURST) within the framework of the National Interest Scien-
ti"c Research Programme.
* Corresponding author. Tel.: #39-010-3532792; fax: #39-
010-3532134.
E-mail addresses: sacchi@dibe.unige.it (C. Sacchi), gera@
dibe.unige.it (G. Gera), mlucio@dibe.unige.it (L. Marcenaro),
carlo@dibe.unige.it (C.S. Regazzoni).
cently carried out at the European level (e.g., PED-
MON, DIMUS, and CREW projects, etc.), and by
many patented products put on the market. Auto-
matic people counting is a problem already faced
in the literature for various actual applications
ranging from railway transport security, pedestrian
tra$c management, detection of overcrowding
situations in public buildings, tourist #ows estima-
tion, etc. The basic principle of operation of all
automatic people-counting systems lies in the real-
time processing of signals coming from some sen-
sors installed close to a people passage point. The
main di!erences in such systems are: (a) the kind of
sensors employed, and (b) the kind of signal-pro-
cessing algorithms to be implemented in order to
derive the number of people. An example of people

0165-1684/01/$ - see front matter  2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 1 6 5 - 1 6 8 4 ( 0 0 ) 0 0 2 8 0 - 2
1018 C. Sacchi et al. / Signal Processing 81 (2001) 1017}1040
Nomenclature
AVS advanced video surveillance
B (x, y) background image (i.e., frame represent-
ing the empty monitored scene)
D (x, y) binary image of di!erences (i.e., image
obtained by di!erence between current
image and background image)
HLIP high-level image-processing module
IU image-understanding module
counting obtained by using one-dimensional signal
processing is given in [7]. The detection of moving
persons is performed by a sensor module made up
of a one-dimensional eight-element ceramic-coated
array detector with pyroelectric PbTiO , an in-

frared-transparent spherical lens and oscillating
mechanical chopping parts. Some examples of
video-based people-counting systems are described
in [11,15,17,18,21]. In [18], the proposed system
aims at counting people crossing gateway thre-
sholds. The system detects and labels mobile re-
gions in the processed image. The detected regions
are then tracked, using a matching operation that
follows a minimising distance criterion. The inter-
pretation step based on the region clustering is
performed to determine how many people corres-
pond to the mobile areas previously detected and
tracked. In [15], real-time image sequence analysis
is made as a basic tool for counting people getting
on and o! a bus. Ref. [21] describes the use of
a RAM-based neural network for identifying the
background elements in the current image in order
to isolate changed regions containing moving per-
sons. The application involves the counting of the
number of passengers using or waiting for the lift in
large buildings. A video-based people-counting sys-
tem for detecting overcrowding situations in under-
ground railway stations is presented in [17]. The
image-processing tasks are performed at di!erent
stages: the "rst stage for noise "ltering and change
detection, an intermediate stage for mobile-area
tracking and feature extraction, and the "nal stage
for image interpretation aimed at people counting.
The estimation of the number of people starts from
I (x, y) current image (i.e., frame currently
processed by the software)
LLIP low-level image processing module
SS sun sensitivity
THR threshold.
 union set operator
 intersection set operator
the extracted features is performed using non-linear
piecewise models and exploiting temporal informa-
tion by a distributed Kalman "lter network.
Finally, it is worth citing Ref. [11], where a multi-
camera approach is proposed to address the
people-counting problem in indoor environments.
In the present work, a novel prototype of a remote
video-based people-counting system, used for con-
tinuous tourist-#ow estimation in a small munici-
pality served by a coaxial cable (CATV) network, is
considered. The prototype was realised within the
context of the EU-ESPRIT 28494 AVS-RIO pro-
ject, a technology-transfer activity ended in 1999
[20]. The end-user of the project, (i.e. the munici-
pality of Riomaggiore La Spezia, Italy), required,
among others, a real-time tourist-counting function
for deriving a reliable estimate of the daily tourist
#ow in the peak season. Due to the particular
topology of Riomaggiore, a reliable estimation of
the daily tourist #ow can be achieved by means of
a single camera overlooking a central tourist pas-
sage point, i.e.: the railway station square. The
transmission of visual information to a remote con-
trol centre has been performed in fully analog mode
by exploiting the existing CATV network of
Riomaggiore. A #exible hierarchical structure of
the remote image processing system for people
counting was designed by subdividing it into di!er-
ent modules, each one able to process at di!erent
levels the video signal acquired by the CATV net-
work. This kind of algorithmic architecture allows
the developers to face in a more e!ective way the
considerable technical problems arised by the se-
vere constraints in terms of counting precision
 C. Sacchi et al. / Signal Processing 81 (2001) 1017}1040
(absolute mean error required less than 10%), which
must be achieved under not-ideal and even adverse
environmental conditions. In such perspective, the
most relevant problem to be solved was related to
the implementation of background-updating and
change-detection algorithms able to work in real
time and, at the same time, su$ciently robust
against unpredictable and variable-speed illumina-
tion changes typical of outdoor environments (such
requirements are generally con#icting one with re-
spect to another). Other problems encountered and
successfully solved have concerned with the real-
time correct recognition of people groups present in
the scene, aimed at minimising the false counting
probability. This actually involved the design and
the implementation of a high-level classi"cation
module able to distinguish persons to be counted,
from vehicles and other objects sometimes appear-
ing inside the monitored square. In the following,
the image-processing algorithms devoted at solving
the above-mentioned problems are described, in
order to provide a valuable technical answer to
a more general problem concerning the automatic
video-based recognition of group of persons in
complex outdoor scenes. In such perspective, the
main innovation of the proposed methods lies in
the exploitation of di!erent level of information
representation, in order to improve the robustness
of some critical modules of the people counting
system, such as: background updating, change de-
tection and classi"cation.
In literature some e!ective and noise-robust
background updating and change-detection algo-
rithms for real world surveillance applications are
proposed. In [14] a background-updating algo-
rithm is considered in the context of a video-based
surveillance application related to the intrusion de-
tection in an indoor scene. Such method essentially
relies on checking whether the changed pixel re-
mains changed for some time or not. To this aim,
a time threshold is imposed. If the time threshold is
exceeded, the observed pixel is regarded as a static
feature of the scene, to be integrated into the back-
ground, otherwise, it is considered as a moving
object. This kind of approach is not suitable for our
applications: indeed it can be observed that groups
of persons often remain in the same position of the
monitored square for some frames. In this case,
1019
a background-updating strategy like the one de-
scribed in [14] would absorb into the background
many people to be counted. In [5], a change detec-
tion method with automatic background updating
is presented. The proposed method is based on
a statistical binary hypothesis testing (whether
a pixel has changed or not), using an appropriate
threshold. A background-updating step is intro-
duced by measuring the percentage of changed
pixels in the current image. When the percentage of
the changed pixel is higher than a "xed mean value,
a new reference frame is taken. In our application,
such kind of approach is not applicable, as, due to
the high complexity and time variability of the
monitored scenario, it does not ensure that the new
stored background actually represents an empty
scene. In this work, we will consider a simple back-
ground updating strategy quite similar to the one
shown in [6] (i.e. a weighting operation between
the current frame and the background frame in
order to generate a new background frame at the
next processing step), however, applied in an adap-
tive way with respect to the di!erent zones of the
image, each of one characterised by speci"c features
in terms of luminance and pixel membership to the
empty scene or to groups of moving persons. The
lack of adaptivity is probably the most relevant
fault of many algorithms for background updating
proposed in literature, when they are used in a not-
controlled luminance environment. This fault can
be noticed also in many change detection algo-
rithms. In particular, two main change detection
techniques are dealt in literature: the pixel-based
techniques and the local-based techniques. The
pixel-based techniques work at pixel level: the most
popular one is the simple di!erencing followed by
thresholding. The main advantage of the pixel-
based approaches is the low computational weight.
Nevertheless, the achieved results are very suscep-
tible to noise and to scene illumination variations.
The local-based methods divide the images into
regions containing more than one pixel and de"ne
some characteristic functions for each region to
detect changes. An example of local-based method
is the quadratic picture function (QPF) [8]. This
method tries to model the di!erent regions in an
image by means of second-degree two-variable
function. Then the algorithm calculates some kind
1020 C. Sacchi et al. / Signal Processing 81 (2001) 1017}1040
of distance between the two functions modelling
the background image and the current image, and
classi"es a region as a changed one if this distance is
above a certain threshold. In spite of its good re-
sults in noisy environment, the QPF method su!ers
from false alarm rate increasing as the illumination
varies over time. Skifstad and Jain proposed in [23]
a shading model method for change detection in
time-varying illumination scenes, thus overcoming
the limitation of the QPF algorithm. Recently
a statistical change detection method based on the
computation of the higher-order circular shift mo-
ments (CSM) on the image regions has been pre-
sented in [12]. The use of the CSMs allows one to
distinguish in an e!ective way the structural cha-
nges in the scene from those due to time-varying
illumination. The robustness of local-based change
detection methods against noise and their capabil-
ity of adapting themselves to time-varying illu-
mination are proven by literature. However, the
high computational complexity of such techniques
is not acceptable in the proposed people counting
application characterised by rigid constraints in
terms of real-time working. For this reason, we
considered a change-detection algorithm that ac-
tually employs the simple di!erence, however, able
to adapt the threshold on the basis of the local
luminosity of the image. The proposed algorithm
can exploit the low computational complexity of
the pixel-based methods and, at the same time, the
adaptivity involved by the image partition into
di!erent luminosity regions, which is the key con-
cept of the local methods. The paper is organised as
follows: Section 2 is aimed at providing a modular
description of the proposed video-based people
counting system, Section 3 is focused on the low-
level background updating and change-detection
algorithms, Section 4 presents the middle-level im-
age-processing algorithms aimed at detecting,
tracking, labelling the mobile areas in the image,
and at collecting features related to each detected
area, Section 5 deals with the image-understanding
algorithms employed to achieve a reliable estimate
of the number of tourists starting from the informa-
tion about the mobile areas provided by the lower-
level modules, Section 6 reports the numerical re-
sults in terms of counting precision; and Section
7 draws the conclusions of the paper.
2. System overview
The proposed remote cable TV-connected
video-based surveillance system has been struc-
tured as a fully centralised intelligence system, in the
sense that the overall image processing tasks are
performed by a central processing architecture
working in the remote control centre. In order to
improve the computational power together with
the ease of use, an image-processing architecture
based on the high-performance computing network
(HPCN) [19] concept has been employed for actual
implementation. The HPCN architecture con-
sidered here is simply a cluster of PCs connected by
a FastETHERNET network. Each PC belonging
to the cluster processes the image sequences coming
from one or more cameras and transmits the results
to the Control Station, which presents them to the
human operator. The block diagram of the HPCN
image-processing architecture installed in the re-
mote control centre is depicted in Fig. 1. The CATV
receiver shown in Fig. 1 could be digital cable
modems or analog frequency converters. In the
actual system implementation, the full analog fre-
quency division multiple access (FDMA) solution
for information transmission has been chosen. The
cluster is composed of:
(1) a PC-based number-plate recognition system
devoted to implementing the other video-sur-
veillance functionality involved (i.e. vehicular
access monitoring [20]);
(2) the people-counting system;
(3) the operator-interface and database system,
which is the actual control station, devoted to
the display of the results through suitable
man-machine interfaces (MMI).
A detailed block diagram of the image-proces-
sing system for people counting is shown in Fig. 2.
The software system has been designed to process
images acquired by means of a monochromatic
camera installed close to the guarded site. A non-
ideal choice of the camera position was forced by
the environmental constraints imposed by the im-
possibility of obtaining the permits for the camera
installation close to private and public buildings in
the guarded area.
 C. Sacchi et al. / Signal Processing 81 (2001) 1017}1040
Fig. 1. Image-processing architecture at the remote control centre.
The people-counting system depicted in Fig. 2
consists of three di!erent modules; each aimed at
implementing a speci"c image-processing task.
The low-level image processing (LLIP) module
works directly on the received image in order to
produce other images that can be useful for further
processing steps. The main image-processing tasks
implemented at this level concern image acquisi-
tion, "ltering, background management and detec-
tion of the di!erences between the current frame
and the updated background. The input to the
LLIP module is the analog TV signal received from
the CATV network and its output is the binary
image of the di!erences between the current frame
and the updated background image.
The high-level image processing (HLIP) module
aims at identifying mobile areas (i.e., blobs) in each
image subsequently acquired by the system and to
track them in space and time, jointly with the
extraction of some numerical characteristics of the
area themselves ( feature extraction). The HLIP
module receives as input the binary image of the
di!erences from the LLIP module, and provides as
output a list of tracked features for each detected
blob.
The image understanding (IU) module is aimed at
computing the number of persons within each de-
tected and tracked blob, starting from the feature
extracted at the HLIP level. The numerical results
1021
concerning the number of persons present in
a single frame, together with the information about
the blob tracking in space and time (acquired by the
HLIP module), are then used to derive an estimate
of the number of arriving tourists by means of
simple mathematical expressions. Three blocks
make up the IU module: a neural network, a
Hough transform algorithm and a Kalman "lter.
Finally, the tourist-counting results are conveyed
to the operator interface and database system, where
they are displayed in real time through a suitable
visual interface and stored in a database for o!-line
checking and elaboration. In the following sections
of the paper, the detailed descriptions of the most
relevant image-processing system modules will be
provided.
3. Low-level image-processing algorithms for
outdoor people counting
3.1. Image acquisition and noise xltering
The design and the implementation of the LLIP
module have been one of the most critical point in
the entire system development. Indeed, such a mod-
ule should be able to work in time-varying external
luminance conditions, by processing an analog
video signal coming from a coaxial cable network.
1022 C. Sacchi et al. / Signal Processing 81 (2001) 1017}1040

Fig. 2. Block diagram of the image processing system for people counting.
 C. Sacchi et al. / Signal Processing 81 (2001) 1017}1040
Fig. 3. Image grabbing window for people counting.
The transmission of a TV signal over a public
shared network like a CATV one involves the addi-
tion of signal-quality degradation factors such as:
Gaussian noise (due to cable lines and ampli"ers),
impulsive-ingress noise (due to electromechanical
and electronic devices working at the residential
sites [26]), and inter-channel interference (due to
spectral overlapping of other TV channels) [16]. In
order to achieve an acceptable quality of the re-
ceived analog signal considerable power expenses
were required. A sample quality of the acquired
image is shown in Fig. 3.
In Table 1, experimental results concerning
the noise e!ects on the acquired images are
shown.
Each row of Table 1 gives a comparison in terms
of mean-square error (MSE), root mean-square er-
ror (RMSE) and peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR)
between a frame directly acquired from the TV
camera and the corresponding frame grabbed from
the received CATV signal. The PSNR values are
quite below the typical values achieved in the case
of low-JPEG compression (about 40 dB). This
means that noise e!ects are considerable and a ro-
bust "ltering mechanism is required. The noise-
1023
Table 1
Experimental trials of analog image transmission over the
CATV network: MSE, RMSE and PSNR values obtained by the
comparison of four di!erent pairs of frames (each pair is com-
posed by a frame grabbed from the demodulated TV signal
received by the network and the corresponding one grabbed
on-site from the TV camera signal)
Pair no. MSE RMSE PSNR (dB)
1 402,9 20,07 22,08
2 395,5 19,89 22,16
3 391,3 19,78 22,20
4 393,2 19,83 22,18
"ltering procedure adopted for cable-based people
counting is performed in two steps (see Fig. 2):
A linear step before change detection, using a
spatial "ltering consisting in a 3;3 convolution of
an acquired image over a "ltering mask;
A non-linear morphological step after change
detection, using morphological operators, such as
erosion and dilatation [22], for cutting o! isolated
changed pixels due to residual image noise.
Such a combined "ltering strategy has been
proven as very e$cient in the case of noise uniform-
ly a!ecting the acquired images as usually happens
in the full analog TV transmission. In fact, neither
misdetection nor false detection errors were noticed
in the higher-level processing stages due to the
channel noise present in the acquired images. In the
following, we will describe in depth the innovative
solutions adopted for background updating and
change detection. These were the most critical im-
age processing aspects to be faced in the actual
system implementation. The solution we con-
sidered to solve such problems consisted in the use
of image segmentation in order to subdivide both
the background image and the current image into
di!erent regions, each characterised by a uniform
pixel grey level and by other features related to the
pixel membership to di!erent change detection
zones. This strategy allows one to apply low-com-
plexity change detection and background-updating
algorithms in an adaptive way with respect to the
characteristics of the single segmented image
regions.
1024 C. Sacchi et al. / Signal Processing 81 (2001) 1017}1040
3.2. Background updating
Background-updating stage is not a strictly ne-
cessary step in video-surveillance systems working
in controlled luminance environments. However, it
becomes extremely important in outdoor scenes
where lighting conditions are potentially widely
variable to improve system robustness. In the con-
text of our work, we observed that only in cloudy
days the luminance conditions of the monitored
scene are substantially time-invariant. In other
cases, variable speed illumination changes are en-
countered.
Let us introduce some quantities that will be
used in the following: in the present paper we will
indicate background image with B(x, y), current
image with I(x, y) and change detection image with
D(x, y). A classical background updating algorithm
[6] involves a simple weighting operation for
generating a new background at step k#1:
B (x, y)"I (x, y)#
[B (x, y)!I (x, y)], (3.1)
I> I I I action between di!erent image-processing sub-
where
3[0, 1] is the background updating coe$-
cient; we can see that if
is close to 0, background
updating speed is heavy, while if

1, the a fast illumination change has a high probability to
background updating is very soft. This kind of
algorithm applies the same degree of updating to
all the pixels composing the background, without
considering whether a pixel belongs to the back-
ground or to any object previously detected in the
scene, but not present in the background. The
major fault of this method is that after a certain
number of frames (depending on the parameter
)
a still object in the environment is always inte-
grated in the background. In this way, every system
based on such method becomes blind to still objects
after a certain number of steps. Clearly, this event is
to avoid in a surveillance system like the one con-
sidered in this work, which is devoted at counting
the number of persons (still or moving) present in
the monitored square.
0. The change detection regions due to
In order to avoid this kind of behaviour, we
"rstly used a method similar to the one described in
[6]. The basic improvement introduced consisted
in a selective background updating. The modi"ed
algorithm did not upgrade the whole background
image, but only the pixels not belonging to a
change detection region. The information about
such kind of pixel membership can be easily re-
turned by the change detection module. Let us
consider the binary change detection image D(x, y),
output of the change detection module. We parti-
tion this image into two subsets M and ;: M is the
set of the pixels in which an object has been detec-
ted, while ; is made by the pixels belonging to the
empty scene:
M"(x , y )∀i : D(x , y )"1,
G G G G
(3.2)
U"(x , y )∀i : D(x , y )"0.
G G G G
Formula (3.2) can be modi"ed as follows:
B (x, y)"I (x, y)
I> I
#[(
!1) f (x, y)#1][B (x, y)!I (x, y)], (3.3)
3 I I
where f (x, y) is the characteristic function of the
3
; set.
This method allows one to exploit a simple inter-
modules. However, it can be usefully exploited only
in the case of slow illumination changes. Indeed,
be detected as a changed region: as a consequence it
could generate huge errors in further estimation
process. To this end, a further improvement of the
proposed method has been introduced, using two
di!erent background-updating techniques; both
based on formula (3.3). If no high-speed illumina-
tion change is detected a soft background updating is
performed by applying (3.3) as it is. If a sudden
illumination change is detected, a heavy background
updating is applied only on zones of the image
classi"ed as lighting variations. In the second case,
(3.3) is applied by regarding the ; set as composed
only by those pixels belonging to change detection
regions involved by lighting variations and by
setting the background updating parameter

"

&
lighting variations are obtained by means of image
segmentation and region classi"cation operations.
In Fig. 4 the block diagram of the heavy back-
ground-updating algorithm is shown.
One can see that the current image I(x, y) and the
background image B(x, y) are both segmented. As
a result of the segmentation, the two images are
 C. Sacchi et al. / Signal Processing 81 (2001) 1017}1040 1025

Fig. 4. Block diagram of the heavy background-updating algorithm.

Fig. 5. Segmented region intersection for heavy background updating: explicative picture.

partitioned in a number R of areas: The subset of the image on which the heavy
background updating has to be performed is com-
S "r : k"1, 2, R, r puted through two steps. The "rst step performs an
I I
intersection operation between di!erent segmented
"(x, y) : l(x, y)
const., (3.4a) regions, and considers the global change detection
S "r : k"1, 2, R, r region as obtained by the union of change detection
' 'I 'I regions associated with each background region:
"(x, y) : l(x, y)
const., (3.4b) cd "cd(r ) by following the rule:
L L
where S is the segmented background image, and
" (cd )" ((((r , r ))A, (r , r ))),
S is the segmented current image. Both the two L 'L L 'L L
' L L
images are made up by the R regions r  and (3.5)
I
r , respectively, and l(x, y) is the luminosity of the
'I
pixel of 2-D coordinates (x, y), i.e. the grey level of where r and r indicate the nth region in the
'L L
the pixel itself. A pixel is said to belong to a certain current and background images, respectively,
region j if the luminosity l of that pixel is close whereas the operator C is the complement opera-
enough to the mean luminosity of the region j:lM ( j). tion made with respect to the whole background
A histogram-based pixel classi"cation algorithm, image. In Fig. 5, the above-mentioned intersection
using a set of (R}1) thresholds for both current and operation is graphically explained.
background images is used to estimate the region When the region set
has been generated, the
sets S and S and their properties. system applies a further region growing [22] step to
'
1026 C. Sacchi et al. / Signal Processing 81 (2001) 1017}1040
separate also regions in cd into spatially connected
L &
groups, i.e.:
"cd , i"1, 2, n, k"1,2, R, (3.6)
GI
where cd is the ith change detection region, with
GI
respect to the kth background segmented region
r . Each region cd is characterised by a set of
L GI
features (e.g. area, shape factor, etc.). A decision rule
is introduced in order to "nd whether a region
belonging to  is due to an illumination change or
to a real change in the scene. In general, a decision
rule can be used that is based on several region
features: however, a simple rule has to be preferred.
For example, one can assume that, if the scene is
not overcrowded, the classi"cation can be only
performed on the basis of the area of the segmented
region, which is actually the number of pixels inside
it, or equivalently its cardinality. A more complic-
ated rule could take into account the shape of the
segmented region in order to decide if it is conse-
quent to a scene illumination change and it has to
be eliminated. In the people-counting application
considered here, the decision rule for the detection
of illumination changes in the scene is based on the
area of each segmented region and on the shape of
the regions. For the speci"c guarded environment,
the shadow projected onto the scene is particularly
long and narrow if compared to the regions
generated by walking pedestrians or cars.
A shadow due to illumination changes can be de-
tected as a thin rectangular region and the reference
image is suddenly adjusted. If an illumina-
tion change is detected in the scene, the system
enters the `heavy background updatinga
stage and it is able to absorb high-speed varia-
tions in the luminosity of the scene; otherwise,
a slow background updating is performed to adjust
the reference image to slow variations. If we
de"ne HH¹(), the set of regions where the heavy
background updating must be applied, we can
rede"ne the background updating operation as
follows:

I (x, y)#
[B (x, y)!I (x, y)]
I I I
if(x, y)3;,
B (x, y)"
I> I (x, y)#
[B (x, y)!I (x, y)]
I & I I In Section 3.2, a region-based change detection
if(x, y)3H, (3.7)
where

. When the heavy background-updat-
ing algorithm is introduced, the higher-level system
modules (i.e. LLIP change detection and mor-
phological "ltering sub-modules, HLIP and IU
modules) are bypassed, as the huge errors related to
the estimated number of persons present in the
current frame would a!ect in a permanent way the
global people #ux estimation. In this case, the num-
ber of persons present in the current frame is as-
sumed to be equal to the one computed for the
previous frame. To allow temporal regularisation,
the acquisition rate has been set to the value of
1 frame/s in order to avoid missing persons (single
or groups) when the people counting is not enabled
for few frames in heavy background updating op-
erations. Fig. 6 shows the results of the segmenta-
tion algorithm: in Fig. 6(a) and (b) the segmentation
of the background image and the current acquired
image into two regions are reported, respectively.
Fig. 6(c) points out the output of the intersection
module where the changes in the scene due to the
illumination changes are evident. Note that only
the area of interest (the square) is processed by the
system. Other non-interesting areas of the image
have been preventively masked.
An example of the results achieved by heavy
background-updating algorithm is shown in the
frame sequence reported in Fig. 7(a)}(d), which
evidences how the heavy background-updating
procedure actually works. In Fig. 7(a) the shadow
line generated by the luminance variation which
occurred in the background scene is clearly notice-
able, whereas in Fig. 7(d), the same line is absorbed
in the updated background. Only the areas of the
background image corresponding to changes due
to luminance variations, already evidenced in
Fig. 6(c), are processed and updated. In the exam-
ples of Figs. 6 and 7, both the background image
and the current image have been segmented into
two regions (R"2), as in the speci"c situation the
railway station building naturally partitions the
monitored square into two di!erent illumination
zones.
3.3. Change-detection algorithm
algorithm has been introduced in order to detect
 C. Sacchi et al. / Signal Processing 81 (2001) 1017}1040 1027

Fig. 6. Image segmentation for heavy background-updating algorithm } visual results: (a) segmentation of the background image, (b)
segmentation of the current image and (c) intersection of the segmented images after region growing.

Fig. 7. Heavy background-updating sequence (a)}(d).

the image regions where an illumination change
occurred. Such regions are then quickly absorbed
by background updating. Although this algorithm
has proven to be e!ective and real-time working for
background updating, it cannot be exploited for
detecting mobile regions corresponding to a group
of persons to be counted, as it does not provide the
required resolution. For this reason, we had to
consider change detection methods working at pixel
level. The proposed change-detection algorithm
1028 C. Sacchi et al. / Signal Processing 81 (2001) 1017}1040
Fig. 8. (a) Block diagram of the adaptive change detection module and (b) adaptive change detection threshold settings.
uses a pixel-based di!erence technique. The system
decides that a pixel is changed if the di!erence
between the grey-level value of that pixel in
the current image and the correspondent pixel in
the background image is higher than a certain
threshold accordingly to the `simple di!erencea
rule

0 if I(x, y)!B(x, y)(THR,
D(x, y)"
1 if I(x, y)!B(x, y)*THR,
where THR is a certain threshold. By analysing real
outdoor images, it can be found out that a single
"xed value of the threshold THR is not enough to
give an acceptable behaviour of the module. In
most cases scenes are considered in which a large
part of the guarded environment is shadowed from
a building or from an environmental feature of the
scene.
The proposed change-detection algorithm works
by using a modi"ed version of the simple di!erence
algorithm. This kind of problem becomes impor-
tant in every situation of high lighting (i.e. a sunny
day): the system that uses only a "xed threshold
either is blind in the shadowed zone (because of the
loss of resolution) or it is blind in the sunny area
(because of the saturation). The modi"ed change
detection module is able to modify the threshold on
the basis of the local luminosity of the image.
A block diagramme of the module is shown in
Fig. 8(a).
The "rst step in this direction is an image
segmentation that is performed on the background
image by following a procedure similar to the one
shown in (3.4a), when the system starts.
After this preliminary step the system uses the
segmented image and the current image to calcu-
late the mean of each area: the computed value is
considered as the correspondent region luminosity.
Let us call FM the set of the means on each region
(card(r ) is the cardinality of the segmented region
I
k):

I(x, y)

FM " fM : fM "VWZPI
I I card(r )
I
, k"1, 2, R .

At this point the non-linear function sketched in
Fig. 8(b) is used to "nd the adapted threshold value
for each area and to build the set TH of the R
thresholds, each associated with a segmented
region r :
I
TH"th "th(r ) : k"1, 2, R. (3.8)
I I
Finally, change detection is performed with the
adapted threshold values, and the sets ; and M are
computed for the soft updating case. Note that
change detection is not applied in the heavy back-
ground-updating case. The quantity (A!B) in Fig.
8b is a number related to the sun-sensibility of the
system: let us call it SS. If SS is large, the system
actually uses only one threshold for every area in
the scene and it can be said that it is not sensible to
 C. Sacchi et al. / Signal Processing 81 (2001) 1017}1040
Table 2
Numerical values of the change detection and background up-
dating parameters
Parameter Value
SS 150
THR 40

(heavy background) 0.05

(soft background) 0.99
the sun. Otherwise, if SS is small, a di!erent thre-
shold is used in each area and the change detection
is sensible even when the di!erence in the lighting
of the two zones in the image is very small. Table 2
shows the values used for the parameters of the
proposed method.
In Fig. 9, it can be seen that the current processed
image (a), the resulting change detection with the
classical simple di!erence method (b) and the re-
sulting one with the modi"ed method subdividing
the image into two regions (c). The performance
improvement, provided by the proposed method, is
evidenced by the detection of two groups of
persons, otherwise, missed by employing the
simple di!erence algorithm. Such improvement has
been achieved by adding a negligible computa-
tional load to the whole processing system, thus
respecting the real-time constraints imposed by the
end-user.
Fig. 9. Example of change detection results: (a) current image, (b) binary change detection image obtained by the simple di!erence and
(c) binary change detection image obtained by the adaptive proposed algorithm.
1029
4. Blob detection, tracking and feature-extraction
algorithms
4.1. Blob detection and tracking submodules
The HLIP module receives as input the binary
di!erence image returned by the LLIP module.
This image contains the only change-detection
regions, corresponding to groups of moving people
or other kind of moving object present in the scene.
The most important image-processing functions
performed by the HLIP module are detection and
tracking of mobile regions in the image and feature
extraction from each detected region. The HLIP
blob-detection and tracking algorithms allow one
to analyse the scene to be monitored at di!erent
levels of abstraction, i.e.:
(a) Detection and labelling of blobs is expected to
provide as output the number of mobile regions
present in the image. Such regions are called blobs
(i.e., connected sets of changed-pixel regions).
A single label is assigned to each blob detected in
the frame. Each labelled blob is graphically evi-
denced by means of a rectangle (see examples of
blob detection results in Fig. 10a).
(b) Mobile-blob tracking provides as output
a graph (see Fig. 10b) of blob correspondences over
time; in the graph each blob is denoted by the same
number over time. The extracted graph of corre-
spondences is used to compute the 2D positions of
the people present in the scene.
1030 C. Sacchi et al. / Signal Processing 81 (2001) 1017}1040

Fig. 10. Output of the HLIP module: (a) output of the blob detection submodule (labelled blob evidenced in the current frame by
rectangles) and (b) output of the blob tracking submodule (blob graph).

(c) Mobile-feature detection extracts seg-
mented regions present in each detected blob in
order to improve the robustness of the tracking
process by using information at a higher-level
resolution.
(d) Mobile-feature tracking is expected to follow
the extracted regions in space and time, as is done
for blobs. More precise details about the algo-
rithms are provided in [24,25].
The labelling task denotes each blob by a num-
ber that assigns a degree of relationship in order to
allow one to recognise the blob in an image se-
quence and to de"ne the temporal correspondences
between the blob in the current image and the same
 C. Sacchi et al. / Signal Processing 81 (2001) 1017}1040 1031

blob in the other images. In this paper, if two blobs Table 3

in the current and previous images show a tem- Choice of the feature set for tourist-counting application
poral correlation, they are called `childa and `fa-
Compu-
thera, respectively. These identi"ers are used by the tational
image-understanding module to have a feedback No. Type complexity Accuracy
between two (or more) consecutive neural network
results in order to improve the counting precision 1 Edge density (Sobel algorithm Medium High
by taking into account the history of the temporal [3])
2 Number of maxima of the Medium High
evolution of the scene. 1-d pro"le edge histogram [17]
3 Second-order Hu-moment [4,9] Medium Medium
4.2. Feature extraction 4 Blob width Low High
5 Blob height Low Medium
The following HLIP submodule performs feature 6 Blob perimeter (i.e. number Low High
of pixels contouring the blob)
extraction from each detected and tracked blob in 7 Blob area (i.e. number of Low High
order to provide the image-understanding module pixels inside the blob)
with a feature set that is suitable for the video- 8 Blob shape-factor (S H Low Medium

surveillance application. A wide set of potentially (blobperimeter)/4(blobarea))
useful features was initially considered. The choice
of the current feature set was made on the basis of
the ability of discriminating among di!erent blob avoid people counting for blobs containing object
classes. The image-understanding module has to forms. In such a case the entire IU module is
assign a class to each detected blob, corresponding bypassed, and the people counting value for the
to the number of persons present in the blob itself. blob is set to 0.
Some experimental trials were performed to map The chosen neural network (NN) performs the
the feature values versus the number of persons conversion of input features extracted for blobs
visually counted in each blob (i.e., the real class of containing human forms into the number of people
the blob). At the end of these trials, the feature set present in such blobs. The unknown functional
shown in Table 3 was selected for actual computa- correspondence between feature values and people
tion. Moreover, in Table 3, the computational com- counting is learnt in an o!-line training phase.
plexity and the degree of accuracy in blob class The temporary counting regularisation module
discrimination are reported for each feature listed. exploits the information provided by the HLIP
module about the temporal correspondences be-
tween blobs detected in consecutive frames in order
5. The image-understanding algorithms to improve the precision of the neural network's
counting, thus overcoming the problems due to the
The image-understanding (IU) module performs suboptimal training strategy adopted. A linear
the conversion of the features extracted by the Kalman "lter is then used to avoid residual noisy
high-level image-processing module into the num- peaks in the number of persons counted in the
ber of people present in each blob detected in the current frame. Finally, a simple numerical integra-
current image. The IU module can be subdivided tion performs the computation of the amount of
into submodules, as described in Fig. 11. people that entered the monitored scene from an
The Hough-transform submodule can be re- initial observation time (t ) up to the current-frame

garded as a further step of shape-based "ltering (the time (t ). This is actually the "nal people counting

previous steps have been performed at the back- result (i.e. tourist counting) expected by the
ground-updating level and by the morphological end-user. The initial value of the tourist counting
"lter working after change detection). Indeed, it can value (i.e. at time t ) is the number of persons

distinguish whether a given blob contains human counted in the "rst frame processed by the system.
forms or object forms (e.g., a van), and it is used to Then, the cumulative tourist counting value is
1032 C. Sacchi et al. / Signal Processing 81 (2001) 1017}1040

Fig. 11. Block diagram of the image-understanding (IU) module.

incremented by the di!erence between the number
of persons counted in the current frame and the one
counted in the previous frame, if such di!erence is
positive (i.e. some new persons might have entered
the scene during the processing step). Otherwise,
the tourist counting is not updated.
5.1. The Hough-based pattern-recognition
submodule
By using the selected features pointed in Section
4.2, it is very di$cult to discriminate between per-
sons and objects potentially present in the scene
(e.g., small vans and electric coaches running in the
railway-station square). The class `objecta, which
corresponds to a 0 value, was introduced as the "rst
attempt. However, it was observed that the neural-
network classi"er often mismatched this class with
other classes generally representing large numbers
of people. In order to avoid heavy-counting errors
a Hough-transform-based pattern-recognition algo-
rithm [1] has been exploited as header IU sub-
module. This transformation uses the information
about a blob's contour (determined by the HLIP
 C. Sacchi et al. / Signal Processing 81 (2001) 1017}1040 1033

Fig. 12. Discrimination of objects from groups of persons: (a) sample frame of an image sequence with groups of persons and objects
blended in the scene and (b) graphs of the number of persons present in the current frame obtained by using only the neural network
classi"er (dashed line), actual number of persons visually counted by the human operator (dash}dotted line), number of persons present
in the current frame estimated by the entire image-processing software (solid line).

module), to extract the various lines that make up
the blob contour itself. The form of a van is much
more regular than the form of group of persons.
Therefore, a thresholding operation on the line
density can be performed in order to derive the
membership of a blob in a human class or in an
object class. In Fig. 12a, a sample frame containing
both persons and vehicles is shown. In Fig. 12b,
some numerical results are shown concerned with
a comparison between the number of persons
counted in the current frame obtained by the
image-understanding module supplied by the
Hough-based pattern-recognition submodule and
the counting obtained by another IU module that
1034 C. Sacchi et al. / Signal Processing 81 (2001) 1017}1040
did not include it. The estimated values are then
compared with the number of persons actually
present in the frame visually counted o!-line by
a human operator.
The dashed line of Fig. 12b depicts a typical
example of counting error involved by the neural-
network classi"er when one or more vans appear in
the scene. In this speci"c case class 0 is confused
with class 7. Therefore, the image-understanding
module estimates seven more pedestrians than the
ones actually present in the scene, which are depic-
ted by the dash}dotted line. On the contrary, the
insertion of the Hough-based pattern recognition
submodule allows one to avoid such kind of classi-
"cation errors, thus providing estimated values of
the number of persons present in the monitored
scene, depicted by the solid line, very close to the
actual ones.
5.2. The neural-network submodule
A three-layer multilayer perceptron neural net-
work using a back-propagation learning rule [13]
has been chosen as the basic classi"cation algo-
rithm in the context of the considered people-
counting application. This kind of neural network
takes a long time for the o!-line training phase.
Nevertheless, when the optimal weights are found,
it makes it possible to perform an assigned task in
real time, thus its performances in terms of this
aspect are better than those provided by other
kinds of state-of-the-art classi"ers employed for
people counting (e.g., the Bayesian networks con-
sidered in [17]).
The network topology consists of 8 neurones in
the input layer, 20 neurones in the hidden layer and
11 neurones in the output layer. A suboptimal
training strategy `by epochsa [13] has been re-
quired due to the impossibility of providing a com-
plete pattern set to the neural-network training
algorithm (the above set would have an in"nite
cardinality in the considered application). Thus, the
selected training set is made up of a large number of
patterns representative of classes, and tests have
been performed using di!erent initialisations for
the network. The feature set provided by the HLIP
module as input to the neural network has already
been described in Section 4.2. Each neural network
output class represents the number of people in the
current blob, as this number can range between one
and 10 (i.e., the number of persons with highest
probability of being present inside a blob). More-
over, a special class is used to describe groups made
up of more than ten persons. The value of this class
makes it possible to minimise the error that may
a!ect some classes of the training set. In order to
avoid noisy patterns due to illumination artifacts,
in the training phase images are grabbed under
optimal illumination conditions directly at the site.
Fifteen di!erent image sequences, each one com-
posed of about 60 frames were used for training.
The choice of the training sequences was also
driven by the necessity of providing the neural
network with an almost equal number of training
patterns for all the eleven classes considered. In this
sense, we can say that a training set with equiprob-
able classes was employed.
5.3. The temporary counting regularisation
sub-module
The e!ects of the non-ideal training of the neural
network can be noticed in the di!erent counting
results related to successive frames, where the num-
ber of persons is the same. Therefore, it is necessary
to resort to a dynamic kind of counting that takes
into account the history of the temporal evolution
of the scene in a way similar to the one described in
[2]. As mentioned in Section 4.1, the HLIP module
provides the information about blob tracking by
means of a graph containing each detected and
labelled blob tracked in both space and time. The
application of the knowledge of a blob's temporary
history to the tourist-counting problem can be
explained as follows. Up to now, the number of
persons present in the ith frame N has been
G
computed only on the basis of the neural-network
classi"cation results, i.e.:
G
N "
CG , (5.1)
G I
I
where B is the number of blobs detected in the ith
G
frame, and CG is the classi"cation result provided
I
by the neural network for the kth blob in the ith
frame.
 C. Sacchi et al. / Signal Processing 81 (2001) 1017}1040
The temporary history of the blob allows one to
derive a prediction of the number of persons present
in the ith frame, NK , on the basis of the classi"cation
G
results concerning the (i!1)th frame. Such results
are related to both predicted classes derived from
the information about previous frames, and current
classes derived by the neural network, as shown in
the following expressions:
G
NK "
CK G ,
G I
I
CK I"f (CK G\, CK G\, 2, CK G\ , CG\, 2, CG\ ).
G   G\  G\
The prediction function f cannot be explicit in
simple closed form. It expresses the recursive class
inheritance of the blobs belonging to the current
frame. Such inheritance depends on:
(a) The blob classi"cation results achieved for the
previous frame.
(b) The label assigned to a blob in the current
frame and the relationship between such a blob
and one or more blobs belonging to the pre-
vious frame (i.e., between blob fathers in the
previous frame and blob children in the current
frame).
Finally, it has been decided to average both the
prediction result and the current neural-network-
based classi"cation result, in order to obtain an
estimate of the number of persons present in the
current frame. A statistical coe$cient equal to 0.5 is
used to average the two achieved results, providing
them with the same degree of likelihood. The choice
of assigning an equal likelihood to the prediction
result and the current classi"cation result has been
made on the basis of some ad hoc experimental
observation trials.
5.4. The linear Kalman xlter sub-module
The people-counting result obtained by the clas-
si"cation and pattern-recognition algorithms, de-
scribed in the previous sections, can present some
noisy peaks, substantially due to sudden and un-
predictable lighting artefacts occurring between
two consecutive images or due to errors made by
the neural network classi"er. Such noisy peaks
sometimes increased the absolute mean error, in-
1035
volving a permanent o!set in the characteristic
curve of the people counting. The people counting
cumulated in consecutive frames is on average lin-
early growing. Therefore, if the people counting
value notably varies between two or three con-
secutive images, it is very likely to have been altered
by some artefacts or other kind of classi"cation
errors. In order to round o! the people-counting
peaks, a linear Kalman "lter [10] has been used.
(5.2a) The Kalman "lter allows one to improve the degree
of correlation between the measure of the number
of persons present in consecutive frames, and hence
it can be regarded as a further step in the temporary
(5.2b)
regularisation of people counting. The use of the
Kalman "lter allows to reduce the absolute mean
error on the number of persons counted in the
current frame to below a 10% threshold, regarded
as the precision constraint to be ful"lled in the
considered application. In Fig. 13, some partial
tourist counting results obtained by processing 300
frames are shown in order to point out the useful-
ness of the introduction of the Kalman "lter sub-
module. The upper curve of Fig. 13 depicts the
tourist counting results obtained by the image un-
derstanding module of Fig. 11 not including the
Kalman "lter. The two curves below depict the
tourist counting results obtained by the complete
IU module of Fig. 11, and the actual number of
persons that entered the square during the observa-
tion time, respectively. One can see that the tourist
counting curve obtained without using the Kalman
"lter tends to follow in its various segments the
pattern of the actual tourist counting curve,
however, with some evident o!sets introduced by
noisy estimation peaks occurring in few frames.
A noticeable error on the "nal counting can be
involved by such kind of drift, which is almost
reduced by the use of the Kalman "lter block.
6. Numerical results achieved by tourist counting
5nal tests
Some extensive tests, under di!erent weather
conditions, were performed in order to prove the
robustness of the system. The aim of the overall
tests was to achieve a counting precision with an
absolute mean error (MAE) less than or equal to
1036 C. Sacchi et al. / Signal Processing 81 (2001) 1017}1040

Fig. 13. Tourist-counting results achieved with and without the Kalman "lter block.

10%. The MAE was computed by averaging with
respect to the test sequence length (N ) the nor-


malised absolute error between the tourist number
estimated by the video-based people counting sys-
tem (¹K ) and the tourist number counted by the
G
human operator, who analysed by sight image
sequences stored after the processing step (¹ )
G
(see (6.1)).
characterised by di!erent illumination of the re-
gions in the scene and by slow variations in the
illumination of the scene over time. The third test is
related to an image sequence of 320 frames (ac-
quired on a variable-weather day), characterised by
di!erent illumination of the regions in the scene
and by fast variations in the illumination of the
scene over time. The graphs of the counting results
related to the cloudy day are presented in Fig. 14,

 
1 ,
 ¹ !¹K  and the graphs of the counting results related to the
MAE"
G G .
N ¹

 G G
In the following, the results show the robustness of
the system to di!erent weather conditions. To this
end, three signi"cant test results are reported. Of
course, the image sequences used for test are com-
pletely di!erent from the image sequences used for
training. The "rst test is related to an image se-
quence of 771 frames (acquired on a cloudy day),
characterised by a uniform illumination of the
overall areas present in the observed scene and by
negligible variations in the illumination of the scene
over time. The second test is related to an image
sequence of 241 frames (acquired on a sunny day),
(6.1)
sunny day and to the variable-weather day are
displayed in Figs. 15 and 16, respectively.
The three graph patterns show satisfactory accu-
racy of the tourist counting under all the weather
conditions considered. The absolute mean errors
on the "rst two tests (see Figs. 14 and 15) are equal
to 10% and 9%, respectively, which ful"ls the
performance constraints imposed by the end-user
requirements. The last test (see Fig. 16) is a!ected
by an absolute mean error equal to 10%, which is
very small, considering that this test is related to the
worst working situation for the tourist-counting
software. Observing the graph in Fig. 16, concern-
ing the number of tourist entering the scene
 C. Sacchi et al. / Signal Processing 81 (2001) 1017}1040 1037

Fig. 14. Tourist-counting results achieved during a cloudy day.

Fig. 15. Tourist-counting results achieved during a sunny day.

1038 C. Sacchi et al. / Signal Processing 81 (2001) 1017}1040

Fig. 16. Tourist-counting results achieved during a variable-weather day.

Fig. 17. Tourist-counting results achieved with and without the adaptive change-detection algorithm.
 C. Sacchi et al. / Signal Processing 81 (2001) 1017}1040
estimated by the software, one can see that when
fast light variations occur, the system needs a peri-
od of adjustment to tune itself to the scene illumina-
tion changes. In such a case, an underestimation of
the tourist #ow occurring in few consecutive frames
can be accepted (maximum measured error about
25%). The last experiment was performed in order
to evidence the crucial impact on the counting
precision of the employment of a low-level change
detection module with adaptive threshold. In
Fig. 17, tourist counting results are shown for the
sunny day case both using a change detection
algorithm with adaptive threshold setting, like the
one described in Section 3.3 (line graph corre-
sponding to the SS value equal to 150) and using
a "xed threshold for each area of the image (line
graph corresponding to the SS value equal to 255).
The tourist-counting results that are provided by
the change-detection algorithm working with
a "xed threshold are quite below the required
precision constraints. This is consequential to the
missing of group of persons, already shown in
Fig. 9b. The real-time requirements are fully met,
too, as the measured processing time is about 1 s
per frame, achieved by using a PC-based hardware
platform with a PENTIUM 400 MHz processor
and 64 MB of RAM capacity.
7. Conclusions
The purpose of this work has been to describe
some novel image-processing solutions for video-
based people counting in the context of a real-time
automatic tourist #ow monitoring application. The
proposed solutions allow to provide reliable tech-
nical answers to some critical points to be faced in
the actual system implementation, quite common
in many outdoor video-based surveillance applica-
tions i.e.:
1. The choice of e!ective, yet real-time, low-level
image-processing algorithms for change detec-
tion and background updating that are also able
to work in an outdoor environment.
2. The necessity of employing e!ective real-time
pattern recognition techniques for mapping low-
and middle-level scene descriptions in a continu-
ous reliable estimation of the number of tourists.
1039
3. The need for addressing points 1 and 2 in a test-
"eld characterised by precise constraints on the
camera positions.
The resulting system can be regarded as a
`close-to-marketa demonstrator of a low-cost ac-
tual product for people counting not only restricted
to the tourist site monitoring application con-
sidered. Other applications should concern with
crowding estimation on metropolitan trains and in
railway stations, classi"cation and counting of per-
sons and vehicles present in proximity to highway
toll gateways, counting of visitors in public parks,
and fun parks, security of indoor o$ces, etc.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Carlo Dambra,
Franco Oberti, and Giancarlo Rapallo for their
valuable assistance in collecting the paper results.
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