Velocity-Guided Tracking of Deformable Contours in Three Dimensional Space

Reuven Zaritsky, Natan Peterfreund, Nahum Shimkin

Abstract: This paper presents a 3D active contour model for boundary tracking, motion analysis and position prediction of non-rigid objects, which applies stereo vision and velocity control to the class of deformable contour models, known as snakes. The proposed contour evolves in three dimensional space in reaction to a 3D potential function, which is derived by projecting the contour onto the 2D stereo images. The potential function is augmented by a velocity term, which is related to the three dimensional velocity field along the contour, and is used to guide the contour displacement between subsequent images. This leads to improved spatio-temporal tracking performance, which is demonstrated through experimental results with real and synthetic images. Good tracking performance is obtained with as little as one iteration per frame, which provides a considerable advantage for real time operation.