Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Identifying and segmenting of specific complex objects in general images is still an open problem and an important research area in image processing and analysis, due mostly to the importance of such a task in many applications. Moreover, tracking such objects in a video sequence is of increasingly greater significance, a fact intensified by the fast prevalence and penetration of digital video technology. Research from this proposal will focus on identifying specific image objects in images and video and track them as they move.  By improving the computational methods of such a cognitive task can advance application that are based on visual identification and extraction. Areas such as object-based compression, video surveillance systems, interactive television and rotoscoping for film editing are a few imporant areas that stand to benefit. Research will follow three stages: i) identify specific image objects in general colour images using a modified spatial colour statistical measure;   ii) incorporate this measure and vector colour information into the energy functional, the underlying mathematical mechanism of active contours (snakes), to perform object segmentation; iii) extend concepts in i) and ii) into the video domain and track objects as they move from frame to frame.  This investigation will involve the development and testing of two new experimental concepts, which will: a) consider an image objects path from frame to frame as a 3-D volumetric solid and use this model to improve active contour tracking accuracy; b) apply active contours across frames to localize and lock onto an objects trajectory path. The goal of this proposal is to develop and advance methodologies and tools for identifying specific objects in images and video to then accurately tracking them in a video scene using novel methodologies based on active contours.