I'm developing an image processing project and I come across the word occlusion in many scientific papers, what do occlusions mean in the context of image processing? The dictionary is only giving a general definition. Can anyone describe them using an image as a context?
Occlusion means that there is something you want to see, but can't due to some property of your sensor setup, or some event.
Exactly how it manifests itself or how you deal with the problem will vary due to the problem at hand.
Some examples:
If you are developing a system which tracks objects (people, cars, ...) then occlusion occurs if an object you are tracking is hidden (occluded) by another object. Like two persons walking past each other, or a car that drives under a bridge.
The problem in this case is what you do when an object disappears and reappears again.
If you are using a range camera, then occlusion is areas where you do not have any information. Some laser range cameras works by transmitting a laser beam onto the surface you are examining and then having a camera setup which identifies the point of impact of that laser in the resulting image. That gives the 3D-coordinates of that point. However, since the camera and laser is not necessarily aligned there can be points on the examined surface which the camera can see but the laser can not hit (occlusion).
The problem here is more a matter of sensor setup.
The same can occur in stereo imaging if there are parts of the scene which are only seen by one of the two cameras. No range data can obviously be collected from these points.
There are probably more examples.
If you specify your problem, then maybe we can define what occlusion is in that case, and what problems it entails
The problem of occlusion is one of the main reasons why computer vision is hard in general. Specifically, this is much more problematic in Object Tracking. See the below figures:
Notice, how the lady's face is not completely visible in frames 0519 & 0835 as opposed to the face in frame 0005.
And here's one more picture where the face of the man is partially hidden in all three frames.
Notice in the below image how the tracking of the couple in red & green bounding box is lost in the middle frame due to occlusion (i.e. partially hidden by another person in front of them) but correctly tracked in the last frame when they become (almost) completely visible.
Picture courtesy: Stanford, USC
Occlusion is the one which blocks our view. In the image shown here, we can easily see the people in the front row. But the second row is partly visible and third row is much less visible. Here, we say that second row is partly occluded by first row, and third row is occluded by first and second rows.
We can see such occlusions in class rooms (students sitting in rows), traffic junctions (vehicles waiting for signal), forests (trees and plants), etc., when there are a lot of objects.
Additionally to what has been said I want to add the following:
For Object Tracking, an essential part in dealing with occlusions is writing an efficient cost function, which will be able to discriminate between the occluded object and the object that is occluding it. If the cost function is not ok, the object instances (ids) may swap and the object will be incorrectly tracked. There are numerous ways in which cost functions can be written some methods use CNNs[1] while some prefer to have more control and aggregate features[2]. The disadvantage of CNN models is that in case you are tracking objects that are in the training set in the presence of objects which are not in the training set, and the first ones get occluded, the tracker can latch onto the wrong object and may or may never recover. Here is a video showing this. The disadvantage of aggregate features is that you have to manually engineer the cost function, and this can take time and sometimes knowledge of advanced mathematics.
In the case of dense Stereo Vision reconstruction, occlusion happens when a region is seen with the left camera and not seen with the right(or vice versa). In the disparity map this occluded region appears black (because the corresponding pixels in that region have no equivalent in the other image). Some techniques use the so called background filling algorithms which fill the occluded black region with pixels coming from the background. Other reconstruction methods simply let those pixels with no values in the disparity map, because the pixels coming from the background filling method may be incorrect in those regions. Bellow you have the 3D projected points obtained using a dense stereo method. The points were rotated a bit to the right(in the 3D space). In the presented scenario the values in the disparity map which are occluded are left unreconstructed (with black) and due to this reason in the 3D image we see that black "shadow" behind the person.
As the other answers have explained the occlusion well, I will only add to that. Basically, there is semantic gap between us and the computers.
Computer actually see every image as the sequence of values, typically in the range 0-255, for every color in RGB Image. These values are indexed in the form of (row, col) for every point in the image. So if the objects change its position w.r.t the camera where some aspect of the object hides (lets hands of a person are not shown), computer will see different numbers (or edges or any other features) so this will change for the computer algorithm to detect, recognize or track the object.
Related
We have this camera array arranged in an arc around a person (red dot). Think The Matrix - each camera fires at the same time and then we create an animated gif from the output. The problem is that it is near impossible to align the cameras exactly and so I am looking for a way in OpenCV to align the images better and make it smoother.
Looking for general steps. I'm unsure of the order I would do it. If I start with image 1 and match 2 to it, then 2 is further from three than it was at the start. And so matching 3 to 2 would be more change... and the error would propagate. I have seen similar alignments done though. Any help much appreciated.
Here's a thought. How about performing a quick and very simple "calibration" of the imaging system by using a single reference point?
The best thing about this is you can try it out pretty quickly and even if results are too bad for you, they can give you some more insight into the problem. But the bad thing is it may just not be good enough because it's hard to think of anything "less advanced" than this. Here's the description:
Remove the object from the scene
Place a small object (let's call it a "dot") to position that rougly corresponds to center of mass of object you are about to record (the center of area denoted by red circle).
Record a single image with each camera
Use some simple algorithm to find the position of the dot on every image
Compute distances from dot positions to image centers on every image
Shift images by (-x, -y), where (x, y) is the above mentioned distance; after that, the dot should be located in the center of every image.
When recording an actual object, use these precomputed distances to shift all images. After you translate the images, they will be roughly aligned. But since you are shooting an object that is three-dimensional and has considerable size, I am not sure whether the alignment will be very convincing ... I wonder what results you'd get, actually.
If I understand the application correctly, you should be able to obtain the relative pose of each camera in your array using homographies:
https://docs.opencv.org/3.4.0/d9/dab/tutorial_homography.html
From here, the next step would be to correct for alignment issues by estimating the transform between each camera's actual position and their 'ideal' position in the array. These ideal positions could be computed relative to a single camera, or relative to the focus point of the array (which may help simplify calculation). For each image, applying this corrective transform will result in an image that 'looks like' it was taken from the 'ideal' position.
Note that you may need to estimate relative camera pose in 3-4 array 'sections', as it looks like you have a full 180deg array (e.g. estimate homographies for 4-5 cameras at a time). As long as you have some overlap between sections it should work out.
Most of my experience with this sort of thing comes from using MATLAB's stereo camera calibrator app and related functions. Their help page gives a good overview of how to get started estimating camera pose. OpenCV has similar functionality.
https://www.mathworks.com/help/vision/ug/stereo-camera-calibrator-app.html
The cited paper by Zhang gives a great description of the mathematics of pose estimation from correspondence, if you're interested.
I'm currently working on a project where I need to be able to very reliable get the positions of the balls on a pool table.
I'm using a Kinect v2 above the table as the source.
Initial image looks like this (after converting it to 8-bit from 16-bit by throwing away pixels which is not around table level):
Then a I subtract a reference image with the empty table from the current image.
After thresholding and equalization it looks like this: image
It's fairly easy to detect the individual balls on a single image, the problem is that I have to do it constantly with 30fps.
Difficulties:
Low resolution image (512*424), a ball is around 4-5 pixel in diameter
Kinect depth image has a lot of noise from this distance (2 meters)
Balls look different on the depth image, for example the black ball is kind of inverted compared to the others
If they touch each other then they can become one blob on the image, if I try to separate them with depth thresholding (only using the top of the balls) then some of the balls can disappear from the image
It's really important that anything other than balls should not be detected e.g.: cue, hands etc...
My process which kind of works but not reliable enough:
16bit to 8bit by thresholding
Subtracting sample image with empty table
Cropping
Thresholding
Equalizing
Eroding
Dilating
Binary threshold
Contour finder
Some further algorithms on the output coordinates
The problem is that a pool cue or hand can be detected as a ball and also if two ball touches then it can cause issues. Also tried with hough circles but with even less success. (Works nicely if the Kinect is closer but then it cant cover the whole table)
Any clues would be much appreciated.
Expanding comments above:
I recommend improving the IRL setup as much as possible.
Most of the time it's easier to ensure a reliable setup than to try to "fix" that user computer vision before even getting to detecting/tracking anything.
My suggestions are:
Move the camera closer to the table. (the image you posted can be 117% bigger and still cover the pockets)
Align the camera to be perfectly perpendicular to the table (and ensure the sensor stand is sturdy and well fixed): it will be easier to process a perfect top down view than a slightly tilted view (which is what the depth gradient shows). (sure the data can be rotated, but why waste CPU cycles when you can simply keep the sensor straight)
With a more reliable setup you should be able to threshold based on depth.
You can possible threshold to the centre of balls since the information bellow is occluded anyway. The balls do not deform, so it the radius decreases fast the ball probably went in a pocket.
One you have a clear threshold image, you can findContours() and minEnclosingCircle(). Additionally you should contrain the result based on min and max radius values to avoid other objects that may be in the view (hands, pool cues, etc.). Also have a look at moments() and be sure to read Adrian's excellent Ball Tracking with OpenCV article
It's using Python, but you should be able to find OpenCV equivalent call for the language you use.
In terms tracking
If you use OpenCV 2.4 you should look into OpenCV 2.4's tracking algorithms (such as Lucas-Kanade).
If you already use OpenCV 3.0, it has it's own list of contributed tracking algorithms (such as TLD).
I recommend starting with Moments first: use the simplest and least computationally expensive setup initially and see how robuts the results are before going into the more complex algorithms (which will take to understand and get the parameters right to get expected results out of)
I am developing speed estimation and vehicle counting application with OpencV and I use IR camera.
I am facing a problem of sun light reflection which causes vertical white region or lines in the images and has bad effect on my vehicle detections.
I want an approach with very high speed, because it is a real-time application.
The vertical streak defect in those images is called "blooming", happens when the one or a few wells in a CCD saturate to the point that they spill charge over neighboring wells in the same column. In addition, you have "regular" saturation with no blooming around the area of the reflection.
If you can, the best solution is to control the exposure (faster shutter time, or close lens iris if you have one). This will reduce but not eliminate blooming occurrence.
Blooming will always occur in a constant direction (vertical or horizontal, depending on your image orientation), and will normally fill entirely one or few contiguous columns. So you can cheaply detect it by heavily subsampling in the opposite dimension and looking for maxima that repeat in the same column. E.g., in you images, you could look for saturated maxima in the same column over 10 rows or so spread over the image height.
Once you detect the blooming columns, you can follow them in a small band around them to try to locate the saturated area. Note that saturation does not necessarily imply values at the end of the dynamic range (e.g. 255 for 8-bit image). Your sensor could be completely saturated at values that the A/D conversion assign at, say, 252. Saturation simply means that the image response becomes constant with respect to the input luminance.
The easiest solution (to me) is a hardware solution. If you can modify the physical camera setup add a polarizing filter to the lens of the camera. You don't even need a(n expensive) camera specific lens, adding a simple sheet of polarized film is good enough Here is one site I just googled "polarizing film" You will have to play with the orientation, but with this mounted position most surfaces are at the same angle and glare will be polarized near horizontal. So you should find a position that works well in most situations.
I've used this method before and the best part is it adds no extra algorithmic complexity or lag. Especially for mounted cameras where all surfaces are at nearly the same angle. This won't help you process the images you currently have but it will help in processing and acquiring future images.
I've been working on a project for some time, to detect and track (moving) vehicles in video captured from UAV's, currently I am using an SVM trained on bag-of-feature representations of local features extracted from vehicle and background images. I am then using a sliding window detection approach to try and localise vehicles in the images, which I would then like to track. The problem is that this approach is far to slow and my detector isn't as reliable as I would like so I'm getting quite a few false positives.
So I have been considering attempting to segment the cars from the background to find the approximate position so to reduce the search space before applying my classifier, but I am not sure how to go about this, and was hoping someone could help?
Additionally, I have been reading about motion segmentation with layers, using optical flow to segment the frame by flow model, does anyone have any experience with this method, if so could you offer some input to as whether you think this method would be applicable for my problem.
Below is two frames from a sample video
frame 0:
frame 5:
Assumimg your cars are moving, you could try to estimate the ground plane (road).
You may get a descent ground plane estimate by extracting features (SURF rather than SIFT, for speed), matching them over frame pairs, and solving for a homography using RANSAC, since plane in 3d moves according to a homography between two camera frames.
Once you have your ground plane you can identify the cars by looking at clusters of pixels that don't move according to the estimated homography.
A more sophisticated approach would be to do Structure from Motion on the terrain. This only presupposes that it is rigid, and not that it it planar.
Update
I was wondering if you could expand on how you would go about looking for clusters of pixels that don't move according to the estimated homography?
Sure. Say I and K are two video frames and H is the homography mapping features in I to features in K. First you warp I onto K according to H, i.e. you compute the warped image Iw as Iw( [x y]' )=I( inv(H)[x y]' ) (roughly Matlab notation). Then you look at the squared or absolute difference image Diff=(Iw-K)*(Iw-K). Image content that moves according to the homography H should give small differences (assuming constant illumination and exposure between the images). Image content that violates H such as moving cars should stand out.
For clustering high-error pixel groups in Diff I would start with simple thresholding ("every pixel difference in Diff larger than X is relevant", maybe using an adaptive threshold). The thresholded image can be cleaned up with morphological operations (dilation, erosion) and clustered with connected components. This may be too simplistic, but its easy to implement for a first try, and it should be fast. For something more fancy look at Clustering in Wikipedia. A 2D Gaussian Mixture Model may be interesting; when you initialize it with the detection result from the previous frame it should be pretty fast.
I did a little experiment with the two frames you provided, and I have to say I am somewhat surprised myself how well it works. :-) Left image: Difference (color coded) between the two frames you posted. Right image: Difference between the frames after matching them with a homography. The remaining differences clearly are the moving cars, and they are sufficiently strong for simple thresholding.
Thinking of the approach you currently use, it may be intersting combining it with my proposal:
You could try to learn and classify the cars in the difference image D instead of the original image. This would amount to learning what a car motion pattern looks like rather than what a car looks like, which could be more reliable.
You could get rid of the expensive window search and run the classifier only on regions of D with sufficiently high value.
Some additional remarks:
In theory, the cars should even stand out if they are not moving since they are not flat, but given your distance to the scene and camera resolution this effect may be too subtle.
You can replace the feature extraction / matching part of my proposal with Optical Flow, if you like. This amounts to identifying flow vectors that "stick out" from a consistent frame-to-frame motion of the ground. It may be prone to outliers in the optical flow, however. You can also try to get the homography from the flow vectors.
This is important: Regardless of which method you use, once you have found cars in one frame you should use this information to robustify your search of these cars in consecutive frame, giving a higher likelyhood to detections close to the old ones (Kalman filter, etc). That's what tracking is all about!
If the number of cars in your field of view always remain the same but move around then you can use optical flow...it will give you good results against a still background...if the number of cars are changing then you need to call goodFeaturestoTrack function in OpenCV after certain number of frames and again track the cars using optical flow.
You can use background modelling to model the background and hence the cars are always your foreground.The simplest example is frame differentiation...subtract the previous frame current frame. diff(x,y,k) = I(x,y,k) - I(x,y,k-1) .As your cars are moving in each frame you will get their position..
Both the process will work fine since you have a still background I presume..check this link to find what Optical flow can do.
there are two images
alt text http://bbs.shoucangshidai.com/attachments/month_1001/1001211535bd7a644e95187acd.jpg
alt text http://bbs.shoucangshidai.com/attachments/month_1001/10012115357cfe13c148d3d8da.jpg
one is background image another one is a person's photo with the same background ,same size,what i want to do is remove the second image's background and distill the person's profile only. the common method is subtract first image from the second one,but my problem is if the color of person's wear is similar to the background. the result of subtract is awful. i can not get whole people's profile. who have good idea to remove the background give me some advice.
thank you in advance.
If you have a good estimate of the image background, subtracting it from the image with the person is a good first step. But it is only the first step. After that, you have to segment the image, i.e. you have to partition the image into "background" and "foreground" pixels, with constraints like these:
in the foreground areas, the average difference from the background image should be high
in the background areas, the average difference from the background image should be low
the areas should be smooth. Outline length and curvature should be minimal.
the borders of the areas should have a high contrast in the source image
If you are mathematically inclined, these constraints can be modeled perfectly with the Mumford-Shah functional. See here for more information.
But you can probably adapt other segmentation algorithms to the problem.
If you want a fast and simple (but not perfect) version, you could try this:
subtract the two images
find the largest consecutive "blob" of pixels with a background-foreground difference greater than some threshold. This is the first rough estimate for the "person area" in the foreground image, but the segmentation does not meet the criteria 3 and 4 above.
Find the outline of the largest blob (EDIT: Note that you don't have to start at the outline. You can also start with a larger polygon, as the steps will automatically shrink it to the optimal position.)
now go through each point in the outline and smooth the outline. i.e. for each point find the point that minimizes the formula: c1*L - c2*G, where L is the length of the outline polygon if the point were moved here and G is the gradient at the location the point would be moved to, c1/c2 are constants to control the process. Move the point to that position. This has the effect of smoothing the contour polygon in areas of low gradient in the source image, while keeping it tied to high gradients in the source image (i.e. the visible borders of the person). You can try different expressions for L and G, for example, L could take the length and curvature into account, and G could also take the gradient in the background and subtracted images into account.
you probably will have to re-normalize the outline polygon, i.e. make sure that the points on the outline are spaced regularly. Either that, or make sure that the distances between the points stay regular in the step before. ("Geodesic Snakes")
repeat the last two steps until convergence
You now have an outline polygon that touches the visible person-background border and continues smoothly where the border is not visible or has low contrast.
Look up "Snakes" (e.g. here) for more information.
Low-pass filter (blur) the images before you subtract them.
Then use that difference signal as a mask to select the pixels of interest.
A wide-enough filter will ignore the too-small (high-frequency) features that end up carving out "awful" regions inside your object of interest. It'll also reduce the highlighting of pixel-level noise and misalignment (the highest-frequency information).
In addition, if you have more than two frames, introducing some time hysteresis will let you form more stable regions of interest over time too.
One technique that I think is common is to use a mixture model. Grab a number of background frames and for each pixel build a mixture model for its color.
When you apply a frame with the person in it you will get some probability that the color is foreground or background, given the probability densities in the mixture model for each pixel.
After you have P(pixel is foreground) and P(pixel is background) you could just threshold the probability images.
Another possibility is to use the probabilities as inputs in some more clever segmentation algorithm. One example is graph cuts which I have noticed works quite well.
However, if the person is wearing clothes that are visually indistguishable from the background obviously none of the methods described above would work. You'd either have to get another sensor (like IR or UV) or have a quite elaborate "person model" which could "add" the legs in the right position if it finds what it thinks is a torso and head.
Good luck with the project!
Background vs Foreground detection is very subjective. The application scenario defines background or foreground. However in the application you detail, I guess you are implicitly saying that the person is the foreground.
Using the above assumption, what you seek is a person detection algorithm. A possible solution is:
Run a haar feature detector+ boosted cascade of weak classifiers
(see the opencv wiki for details)
Compute inter-frame motion (differences)
If there is a +ve face detection for a frame, cluster motion pixels
around the face (kNN algorithm)
voila... you should have a simple person detector.
Post the photo on Craigslist and tell them that you'll pay $5 for someone to do it.
Guaranteed you'll get hits in minutes.
Instead of a straight subtraction, you could step through both images, pixel by pixel, and only "subtract" the pixels which are exactly the same. That of course won't account for minor variances in colors, though.