David Hirvonen

Aerial video surveillance and exploitation

There is growing interest in performing aerial surveillance using video cameras. Compared to traditional framing cameras, video cameras provide the capability to observe ongoing activity within a scene and to automatically control the camera to track the activity. However, the high data rates and relatively small field of view of video cameras present new technical challenges that must be overcome before such cameras can be widely used. In this paper, we present a framework and details of the key components for real-time, automatic exploitation of aerial video for surveillance applications. The framework involves separating an aerial video into the natural components corresponding to the scene. Three major components of the scene are the static background geometry, moving objects, and appearance of the static and dynamic components of the scene. In order to delineate videos into these scene components, we have developed real time, image-processing techniques for 2-D/3-D frame-to-frame alignment, change detection, camera control, and tracking of independently moving objects in cluttered scenes. The geo-location of video and tracked objects is estimated by registration of the video to controlled reference imagery, elevation maps, and site models. Finally static, dynamic and reprojected mosaics may be constructed for compression, enhanced visualization, and mapping applications.

Video georegistration: algorithm and quantitative evaluation

An algorithm is presented for video georegistration, with a particular concern for aerial video, i.e., video captured from an airborne platform. The algorithms input is a video stream with telemetry (camera model specification sufficient to define an initial estimate of the view) and geodetically calibrated reference imagery (coaligned digital orthoimage and elevation map). The output is a spatial registration of the video to the reference so that it inherits the available geodetic coordinates. The video is processed in a continuous fashion to yield a corresponding stream of georegistered results. Quantitative results of evaluating the developed approach with real world aerial video also are presented. The results suggest that the developed approach may provide valuable input to the analysis and interpretation of aerial video.

Video to reference image alignment in the presence of sparse features and appearance change

A robust, multi-frame, progressive refinement framework for registering narrow field of view video to reference imagery is presented. A major strength of the approach is its effectiveness in the presence of dissimilar video and reference image appearance. Normalized oriented energy image pyramids are employed to enable alignment of images with global visual dissimilarities, yet local feature commonality. Local matching is then applied coarse-to-fine, along four dimensions: spatial frequency, local support, search range, and model order (a robust parametric model fit is used to reject outliers at each iteration). Globally optimal multi-frame alignment is obtained with respect to several constraints: frame-to-reference local matches, recovered frame-to-frame motion, and optional a priori estimates of sensor pose. The framework is described in detail and applied to two examples: aerial video to geographic reference image alignment (georegistration) and retinal slit lamp video to fundus image alignment.

Stereo-Based Object Detection, Classi?cation, and Quantitative Evaluation with Automotive Applications

A real-time stereo-based pre-crash object detection and classification system is presented. The system employs a model based stereo object detection algorithm to find candidate objects from the scene, followed by a Bayesian classification framework to assign each candidate to its proper class. Our current system detects and classifies several types of objects commonly seen for automotive applications, namely vehicles, pedestrians/bikes, and poles. We describe both the detection and classification algorithms in detail along with real-time implementation issues. A quantitative analysis of performance on a static data set is also presented.