Thermal imaging for enhanced foreground – background segmentation

Foreground background segmentation is the primary step of most automated video monitoring system aiming at object tracking, event detection or scene interpretation. In uncontrolled environments, with dynamic background and lighting changes, this basic task is very challenging. This work is based on the hypothesis that the combination of LWIR (8-12 m) and colour cameras can significantly improve the robustness of foreground background segmentation. An acquisition unit with co-aligned thermal and visible fields of view is used. Starting from a state-of-the-art algorithm for moving objects extraction in colour video, we adapted the method for processing of "RGBT" video format. Pros and cons of using thermal imagers in outdoor video monitoring applications are discussed. A preliminary objective performance evaluation of detection accuracy is also presented.