2016 International Conference on Smart Grid and Electrical Automation
The System Design for Improving Vechicle Detection Precision Based on Image
processing
Li Congsheng ,He Zhaoyang
Harbin Institute of Technology at Weihai, Weihai, Shandong, 264209, China
lishengyeach@163.com
Abstract—Research on moving vehicle detection based on
Video and Image Processing is a significant research topic in
image processing and computer vision, and is also a basic and
key work in intelligent traffic system field, which directly
affects the follow-on object identification and tracking,
analysis and understanding of the traffic scene. In this paper
detection of moving vehicles has been studied, analyed and
summarized the existing moving object detection technology,
an moving vehicle detection system is introduced and designed.
In the system the improved frame difference method combined
with image contrast enhancement and morphological filter is
proposed, which can effectively solve the background
difference method and frame difference method can not
extract the regions of interest effectively, besides, using a
connected region labeling method to fill the voids in the middle
of the vehicle image, the target area becomed more complete
and clear. Using this kind of system can reduce computation,
improve identification speed, and receive better robustness
and higher recognition effect to recognize vehicles more
efficiently. Therefore the research contents and the system
design have the practical significance to the research of vehicle
detection technology based on the video.
Keywords-ITS; Vehicle detection system; Frame difference
method;Image processing
I. INTRODUCTION
Digital image processing technology is to various
technologies and methods of digital image processing by
using computer technology. The early method is aimed to
improve human’s visual effect, recover the pictures, and
improve the quality. Later, with the development of
computer technology and pattern recognition technology, the
computer digital image processing technology has been
improved. It is so widely used that almost involved in every
part of our life and scientific fields. Getting the information
of the moving target from the video sequence images is the
hot topic in the field of computer digital image processing
technology.
A vehicle detection system based on image processing
technology is very important in the ITS, which is not only to
the trend and hot spot but also the heading in the field of
Intelligence Transportation System. In the system, vehicle
detection based on Video Image Technology is to analyze
the image sequence of traffic monitoring system collection.
Since traffic video image holds extremely large amounts of
raw data, we can use the strong correlation between
consecutive adjacent frames in temporal and spatial domains
extraction of moving vehicles in order to get more traffic
978-0-7695-5948-3/16 $31.00 © 2016 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/ICSGEA.2016.60
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information, such as traffic flow, average vehicle speed,
occupancy rate, vehicle type and so on.
The detection result is seriously affected by the quality of
noise and image, freightflow, noise and so on. In the actual
image processing, the edge of target is incomplete and
occasionally contain cavities. In this paper the main
emphasis of our research is to improve image quality, image
features, eliminate interference factor and etc, and it aims to
set up a set of image processing system to more simply and
accurately extract the region of interest from complex scenes.
II. IMAGE PREPROCESSING
The transport video images got by the image capture
system are always full of noise which caused by complex
outdoor ambient light, hardware itself and adding from the
process of signals’ acquisition, conversion and transmission.
Therefore, we use digital image pre processing technology to
deal with the videos so that we can identify and segment the
moving vehicle from the image.
A. Grey Scale Processing
Grey scale processing is to remove the original image of
the color information, only toretain the image of the
brightness information. And the information of lightness is
divided into a total of 256 levels from 0 which represents the
blackest to 255, which represents the whitest.In this paper,
weighted average method is used to carry out weighted
average of RGB three components in color image according
to its importance and other indexes. The sensitivity of
human’s eyes towards RGB components are different, which
has the lowest sensitive to blue and highest sensitive to green,
Therefore, we can use the following formula to weighted
average the RGB components and realize image grizzled
processing.
Specific formula is as follows:
f x, y   0.30Rx, y   0.59Gx, y   0.11Bx, y 
B. Filtering Denoising
In view of the strong correlation between adjacent pixels
of the image, filtering denoising can help to limit or reduce
the noise signals’ interference to the image, attenuate the
needless information in the images, improve the quality and
highlight the interesting parts selectively.
Considering the condition that the mean filter filters out
less completely than the median filter the paper uses the
median filtering algorithm. Assume that the median filtering
will process an image, the mobile windowis first identified
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which take (x, y) as the center of the N pixel. (N is an odd
number). First, sort each pixel by gray scale (ascending or
descending). Then, use the sorted intermediate value instead
of the center pixel point of window called f(x, y).
Specific formula is as follows:
f x, y  medianf x k , y t , k , t  w
C. Image Enhancement Processing
Image enhancement processing technology is an image
processing technology which can amend the blur image
condition and improve the image quality. In the process of
traffic video images’ acquisition, transmission and
conversion, various factors can cause the image quality’s
deterioration and degradation. All these factors led to the
difficult to extract useful information from image.
Image enhancement processing technology is the
proper handling of the deterioration and degradation of the
image. Emphasis on image edge, contour and contrast help
the image post-processing to obtain more useful
information[1]. Gray transformation method is also called
contrast stretching. It is one of the simplest image
enhancement methods, using the most simple piece wise
linear function to stretch the image. It expands the gray
scale of the image from a small area to a larger area to
stretch, in order to achieve the effect of image enhancement.
III. MOVING VEHICLE DETECTION AND RECOGNITION
Motion vehicle detection is an analysis of the image
sequence of video, detecting the moving vehicle from the
video traffic image by using the time domain and spatial
domain information of the image. Moving vehicle detection
is the basis for the subsequent traffic information
acquisition, and the subsequent parameters are derived from
the accurate detection of moving vehicles. However, the
diversity of road traffic conditions, background disturbance,
ambient light, shadow interference and the influence of the
external factors such as camera shake make moving vehicle
detection in traffic video face great challenge.
A good moving object detection algorithm should have
strong robustness, which can detect the moving object from
the video image accurately and quickly to meet
requirements of traffic parameters detection. In recent years,
people have made a lot of researches on moving object
detection technology of video image.Traditional two frame
difference method for moving target detection have large
noise, and the result of the detection is incomplete, and
include missed detection and error detection for the too
slow moving target detection.Therefore, this paper designs
the method to detect moving vehicles which combines
adjacent frame difference method with frame difference
method. Cumulative frame difference method’s basic idea is
to increase the number of frame difference and then to
improve the accuracy of motion vehicle identification [2].
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A. Accumulative Frame Difference Method
Accumulated frame difference method combined with
adjacent frame difference method and discontinuous frame
difference is described as follows.
First, compute the adjacent frame difference and the
discontinuous frame difference. Assume height component
of the Kth frame image on (x, y) is fk(x, y). Then the
adjacent frame difference dk(x, y) and discontinuous frame
difference d’k(x, y) can be expressed as:
d k  x, y   f k  x, y  f k 1 x, y 
d 'k  x, y   f k  x, y  f k  2  x, y 
Then, calculate the cumulative value of adjacent frame
difference and frame difference.Select n frame images to
accumulate the difference of adjacent frame difference and
frame difference respectively and represent the results by
m(x,y) and m’(x,y).
The formula is:
n 1
mx, y   d k x, y 
k 0
n 1
m' x, y   d ' k x, y 
k 0
Finally, to determine the threshold of total accumulated
frame difference. The mm(x, y) is the cumulative result of
the adjacent frame difference m(x,y) and the frame
difference cumulative value m’(x,y). The threshold formula
is
mm( x, y ) if m( x, y )  m' ( x, y ) u
mm x, y  
0 else
The selection of threshold formula directly affects the
final test results. If the selected threshold is too big, it will
create cavities inside the cars those are too slow to make the
moving vehicle extraction not complete. If the threshold
selection is too small, it will introduce too much noise.
Usually select the threshold in 20 or so can remove more
background noise, but due to the complexity of the outdoor
ambient light (such as a cloudy day, in the evening, etc.),
the actual needs of the threshold choice according to the
specific circumstances.
B. Segmentation processing of Moving Target Region
After receiving difference image by using the frame
difference method, some steps should be done to complete
the detection of moving vehicle. Frame difference diagrams
need to be processed by threshold segmentation to approach
image binaryzation. Then, Transform the gray image to the
binary image
The characteristic of the binary image is that the image is
completely black and white, all pixels in the image of the
gray value of only two possible, either is 0 or 255, that is, the
pixel color is either black or white. The most common way
to process binary image is to use the threshold segmentation
technology. It is particularly applicable when the contrast of
moving target and background contrast degree is strong.
Furthermore, the algorithm is simple in calculation and can
always achieve better regional closure and boundary
connectivity for the non overlapping partitions. Threshold
segmentation technology principle is to use the threshold to
distinguish images of the moving object region and
background region. If the pixel gray values are bigger than
the threshold set in advance, they will be changed to 255, as
the moving target region; otherwise, they will be set to 0, as
the background region [3].
Choosing the best reasonable threshold is the key to get
good image segmentation. The aim to select the appropriate
threshold is to distinguish between foreground points and
background points as accurately as possible. According to
the different use of scenarios, the threshold can be divided
into global fixed threshold method and variable threshold
method. Global fixed threshold method in binary threshold
in the process of has the fixed parameter, and the algorithm
is simple. However, the disadvantage is that the miscarriage
of justice is likely to occur. Thus, in order to obtain good
segmentation results, we must take automatic threshold
method, and the threshold image should be compute with a
series of complex operations to dynamically update.
Following pictures shows the effect of the iterative
threshold and the Otsu threshold segmentation. Figure 1 is
the interception of a video image in a frame. Figure 2 is the
image after iterative threshold. Figure 3 is the image after
threshold segmentation. The experimental results show that
the Otsu threshold segmentation method has good
segmentation effect.
IV. IMAGE FURTHER PROCESS
We have realized the foreground region and background
region segmentation, which is not only the first step of
vehicle detection but also the most important one. However,
due to the influence of the light in the acquisition,
conversion and transmission of the outdoor environment, the
speed of the moving vehicle and the noise introduced in the
process of collection, conversion and transmission of the
video equipment, the quality of image segmentation has
been reduced. The reduction can be mainly found in many
places, the background is often mixed with some of the
white noise points. The detected white foreground motion
regions mixed with black noise pixels, even within the white
foreground motion regions appears big "hole". The quality of
segmented image noise removal affects the intelligent
transportation systems in the vehicle flow detection, vehicle
recognition, vehicle to positioning and tracking of vehicles.
In this paper, the morphological filtering technology and the
tag based region filling technology are combined to deal
with the two value image, in order to improve the accuracy
of motor vehicle flow detection.
A. Mathematical Morphology Processing
Morphological image processing is based on
mathematical morphology, which contains mathematical
morphology of corrosion, expansion, open operation and
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close operation of the four basic computing. In mathematical
morphology of these four types of operation is the basis, all
the complex morphological operations can be combined and
derived by the four basic operations. In the image processing,
open operation and close operation are the most basic Image
denoising method, while in the morphology of corrosion,
expansion and operation are the basis of open and close.
Erosion operation is one of the two basic operations, in
the mathematical morphology, mainly used to remove the
noise of the image of small particles by way of inward
contraction of the image contour to eliminate adhesion of the
target area so that the different detection targets are
independent.
Dilation operation is the dual operation of erosion
operation, just the opposite to corrosion operation in the role
of mathematical morphology. It is mainly used to eliminate
small particle noise within the target area and to fill the void
in the target area by dilating the range of image contour.
Image corrosion expansion processing still has a problem.
The moving target area of corrode image will be smaller,
while the moving target area of expanded image will be
bigger. People designed opening and closing operation to
deal with this problem. Morphological open operation and
close operation consist of a combination of dilation and
erosion algorithm, the images those were dilated and then
processed for corrosion treatment called closing operation.
The images those were corroded and then dilated called open
operation.
To sum up, each of the open operation and close
operation in image processing has its own advantages. We
can use open operation to help smooth processing of image
contour without changing the area and shape of the moving
object region. Close operation can process the image
fragmentation and the moving target area of small hole
filling without changing the position and shape of the
moving object region[4].
In this paper, with the integrated use of open operation
and close operationÿs advantages, the filter processing open
operation before closing operation is designed to filter the
images. The experimental results are showned. Figure 1 is
the image with threshold segmentation. Figure 2 is the image
processed by morphology.

Figure 1. Image with threshold segmentation


Figure 2. Image processed by morphology
From Figure 1 and Figure 2 we can see that after
morphological filtering, black background noise of
threshold segmentation image can be eliminated. Also, the
noise of vehicle area and bodies of the cars are dealt with.
In addition, the contour of the moving vehicle is relatively
smooth, and the fracture of the car bodies are filled up,
therefore, the filtering denoising method works.
B. Area Filling Based On Label
In most cases the image noise is eliminated, and the
small cavity inside the moving car can be filled up after the
label-based area in the binary image being filled, segmented
and processed with mathematical morphology filter. But for
some cars with especially slow motion, or the cars whose
body colors are relatively close to the color of the road
surface due to the ambient light, test results often lead to a
black hole formed inside the car, we can not use the
mathematical morphology to remove image noises. In these
cases, area filling can be employed to fill the cavity inside
the car body [5].
The basic idea is to label the connected areas of the
binary image which has been morphologically processed.
Label all the connected area of the binary image, namely the
large white area (moving target area), as 1, and each chunk
of black area of the connected area (background area) as 0. If
there are black areas not connected to the black areas which
are labeled as 0, then label them as 2. Finally, judge all areas
that have been labeled as 2. If the dimensions of the black
areas labeled as 2 are smaller than a threshold, then change
the color of these areas from black to white, label them as 1,
and then complete the filling of the car body. If the
dimensions are bigger than a threshold, then change the label
of these areas as 0. After the label transformation, only two
types of labels are left in the entire image, namely label 0 for
background areas and label 1 for areas where several moving
cars are detected.
Area filling process is as follows:
(1) Start the program
(2) Input a binary image
(3) Set the labels for the connected area in the image
(4) Determine whether the dimensions of the areas
labeled as 2 are smaller than the threshold value; if the
dimensions are smaller, then label them as 1; if not, label
them as 0.
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(5) Output the modified binary image.
From Figure 2 and Figure 3 we can see that after the
above processing all moving objects are more
distinguishable and more complete.

Figure 3. Image after region filling
V. CONCLUSIONS
Moving vehicle detection and recognition are the
important parts of the intelligent transportation system, this
research designs a scheme of moving vehicle identification
in video aimed to identify the moving vehicles in the traffic
video accurately. The experimental result shows that using a
graying, median filtering and gray level transformation
three-step treatment method is superior to the traditional
image pre processing algorithm at the pre processing stage,
because it can keep the main features of the subject. At the
stage of moving vehicle detection, the system designed
accumulated frame difference method to improve the
regional moving vehicle recognition’s accuracy after the
processing of frame difference. Finally, at post processing
stage, use the algorithm combining morphological filtering
technique with the technology based on tag area filling to
further process the two valued image. In this way, the area of
the moving object becomes more complete. In short, this
paper designs a set of video motion vehicle identification
scheme, which can obtain the target area of moving vehicles
quickly and accurately with sufficient light, and achieved
good results.
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