Abstract
In this paper we present a complete system for object tracking over multiple uncalibrated cameras with or without overlapping fields of view. We employ an approach based on the bag-of-visterms technique to represent and match tracked objects. The tracks are compared with a global object model based on an ensemble of individual object models. The system can globally recognise objects and minimise common tracking problems such as track drift or split. The output is a timeline representing the objects present in a given multi-camera scene. The methods employed in the system are online and can be optimized to operate in real-time.

Abstract
A simple and efficient hybrid framework for evaluating algorithms for tracking objects in video sequences is presented. The framework unifies state-of-the-art evaluation metrics with diverse requirements in terms of reference information, thus overcoming weaknesses of individual approaches. With foundations on already demonstrated and well known metrics, this framework assumes the role of a flexible and powerful tool for the research community to assess and compare algorithms.

Abstract
It is expected that future delivery of digital TV signals will use H.264. This paper presents a novel coding scheme for multi-program video transmission in which the channel capacity is distributed among the programs according to the program complexities resulting in a more uniform overall image quality. A complexity bit rate control algorithm based on the structural similarity index (SSIM) is proposed. SSIM metric is presented under the hypothesis that the human visual system (HSV) is very specialized in extracting structural information from a video sequence but not in extracting the errors. Thus, a measurement on structural distortion should give a better correlation to the subjective impression. Computer simulations have demonstrated very promising results showing joint coding is able to effectively control the complexity of the multi-program encoding process whilst improving overall subjective compared to independent coding and algorithms based on traditional distortion/quality metrics. ©2008 The Institution of Engineering and Technology.

Abstract
Object detection and tracking is an essential preliminary task in event analysis systems (e.g. visual surveillance). Typically objects are extracted and tagged, forming representative tracks of their activity. Tagging is Usually performed by probabilistic data association, however, in systems capturing disjoint areas it is often not possible to establish such associations, as data may have been collected at different times OF in different locations. In this case, appearance matching is a valuable aid. We propose using bag-of-visterms, i.e. an histogram of quantized local feature descriptors, to represent and match tracked objects. This method has proven to be effective for object matching and classification in image retrieval applications, where descriptors can be extracted a priori. An important difference in event analysis systems is that relevant information is typically restricted to the foreground. Descriptors can, therefore, be extracted faster, approaching real-time requirements. Also, unlike image retrieval, objects can change over time and therefore their model needs to be updated Continuously. Incremental or adaptive learning is used to tackle this problem. Using independent tracks of 30 different persons, we show that the bag-of-visterms representation effectively discriminates visual object tracks and that it presents high resilience to incorrect object segmentation. Additionally, this methodology allows the construction of scalable object models that can be used to match tracks across independent views.

Abstract
The primary goal of the research on image segmentation is to produce better segmentation algorithms. In spite of almost 50 years of research and development in this Held, the general problem of splitting in image into meaningful regions remains unsolved. New and emerging techniques are constantly being applied with reduced Success. The design of each of these new segmentation algorithms requires spending careful attention judging the effectiveness of the technique. This paper demonstrates how the proposed methodology is well suited to perform a quantitative comparison between image segmentation algorithms using I ground-truth segmentation. It consists of a general framework already partially proposed in the literature, but dispersed over several works. The framework is based on the principle of eliminating the minimum number of elements Such that a specified condition is met. This rule translates directly into a global optimization procedure and the intersection-graph between two partitions emerges as the natural tool to solve it. The objective of this paper is to summarize, aggregate and extend the dispersed work. The principle is clarified, presented striped of unnecessary supports and extended to sequences of images. Our Study shows that the proposed framework for segmentation performance evaluation is simple, general and mathematically sound.

Abstract
Multi-view registration is an essential step in order to generate the side information for multi-view Distributed Video Coding. As stated in our previous work (Ciobanu and Crte-Real, Multimed Tools Appl 48(3):411-436, 2010) it can be achieved by SIFT (scale-invariant feature transform) generated keypoint matches. The registration accuracy is vital for the adequate generation of side information and it directly depends on the reliable match of possibly all the available point to point correlations between two complete-overlapped views. We propose a solution to this problem based on iterative filtering of SIFT-generated keypoint matches, using the Hough transform and block matching. It aims the generic, real-life and constraint-free scenarios having an arbitrarily close angle between the two views. Practical results show an overall significant reduction of the outliers while maintaining a high rate of correct matches.