3D fingertip and palm tracking in depth image sequences

We present a vision-based approach for robust 3D fingertip and palm tracking on depth images using a single Kinect sensor. First the hand is segmented in the depth images by applying depth and morphological constraints. The palm is located by performing distance transform to the hand contour and tracked with a Kalman filter. The fingertips are detected by combining three depth-based features and tracked with a particle filter over successive frames. Quantitative results on synthetic depth sequences show the proposed scheme can track the fingertips quite accurately. Besides, its capabilities are further demonstrated through a real-life human-computer interaction application.