Video Object Counting With Scene-Aware Multi-Object Tracking

The critical challenge of video object counting is to avoid counting the same object multiple times in different frames. By comparing the appearance and motion feature information of the detection results, the authors use the multi-object tracking method to assign an independent ID number to each object. From the time the ID tag is obtained until the end of the video, each object is counted only once. However, even minor amounts of image noise can cause irreversible changes in feature information, resulting in severe tracking drifts. This paper introduces the concept of scene awareness and addresses unreasonable ID assignment caused by unreliable feature matching in the context of region division. Through the macro analysis of the scene, the authors define the region (called the transition region) where the number of objects can increase or decrease and require that all ID assignments for new objects and ID deletions for existing objects take place only in the transition region. Because the actual number of objects in the non-transition region is constant, they rematch unmatched objects with existing IDs in the region (called ID relocation) because changes in object ID are caused by feature matching failure. In this paper, the authors create algorithms for dynamically generating transition regions, detecting object increases and decreases, and relocating object IDs. Experimental results show that the method effectively improves the accuracy of video object counting.