A METHOD OF MOTION ANALYSIS USING SPATIOTEMPORAL IMAGE-DIRECTIONAL TEMPORAL PLANE TRANSFORM

Some of the recent image processing methods proposed for detecting obj ect moving in 3-D space form a spatiotemporal image by placing consecu tive camera images side by side in temporal order. This paper presents one such method, the directional temporal plane transform method (DTT ), an image processing method that is not influenced by environmental changes. Assuming that the objects are moving on a nearly constant pat h, DTT first extracts significant data about these objects from each i mage, and then makes a 1-D data stream by projecting the data long a d irectional axis parallel to the moving loci. After that, by placing th e 1-D data from individual frames side by side in temporal order, the spatiotemporal image is transformed into a 2-D image on a directional temporal plane. Since the object motion is represented by regions of t his 2-D image, moving objects can be detected by simple 2-D image proc essing. This method was used on an experimental basis to detect vehicl es running along a road. Experimental results show the effectiveness o f the method. An advantage of this method is its ability to detect veh icles using the same processing during both daytime and nighttime-a fe ature that has not been achieved with conventional methods.