Dropped object detection in crowded scenes

In the last decade, the topic of automated surveillance has become very important in the computer vision community. Especially important is the protection of critical transportation places and infrastructure like airport and railway stations. As a step in that direction, we consider the problem of detecting abandoned objects in a crowded scene. Assuming that the scene is being captured through a mid-field static camera, our approach consists of segmenting the foreground from the background and then using a change analyzer to detect any objects which meet certain criteria. In this thesis, we describe a background model and a method of bootstrapping that model in the presence of foreign objects in the foreground. We then use a Markov Random Field formulation to segment the foreground in image frames sampled periodically from the video camera. We use a change analyzer to detect foreground blobs that remain static through the scene and based on certain rules decide if the blob could be a potentially abandoned object.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Author dc:creator

• Bhatnagar, Deepti, S.M. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• W. Eric L. Grimson.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/53204

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/53204