Motion detection and shadow suppression in video streams

Abstract

In this diploma thesis, common colour models for background subtraction and problems related to their utilisation are discussed. A novel approach to represent chrominance information more suitable for robust background modelling and shadow suppression is proposed. The method presented in this thesis relies on the ability to represent colours in terms of a 3D-polar coordinate system having saturation independent of the brightness function; specifically, the advantage behaviour of the Improved Hue, Luminance, and Saturation (IHLS) space is used. The additional peculiarity of the approach is that it deals with the problem of unstable hue values at low saturation by modelling the huesaturation relationship using saturation-weighted hue statistics. The effectiveness of the proposed method is shown in an experimental comparison with approaches based on Normalised RGB, c1c2c3, and HSV.