Object segmentation for video coding

Object segmentation and tracking are problems within the scope of MPEG-4 standardization activities. This paper proposes a novel algorithm to extract and track the moving objects in the video sequences. A model-based tracking method is developed to localize the object in each frame of a video sequence. One distinctive property of this method is that the model of an object is acquired dynamically from the video sequence, rather than being provided a priori. Our method also allows the object to have large movement between two frames and to be partially occluded in several successive frames. To extract contiguous object boundaries, an active contour model is then applied to the binary image representation of the object model. Compared with the related work of Neri et al. (1998), the proposed algorithm can achieve a more accurate location of object boundaries