Shape tracking based on the modular active shape model

The active contour model was proposed by M. Kass et al. in 1988 for segmentation and tracking of target objects in image space. In their theory some kinds of energies was designed to extract the boundaries of targets by giving higher or lower values of snake energy to them. In ACMs, some basic problems such as weakness to strong surrounding edges, the drift of snaxels due to the changes of illumination conditions and sensitivity to cluttered environments, are still not easy to be overcome in the applications of ACM to real environments. In this paper there are three main contributions. Firstly, the combination of the ACM and the ASM is tried to implement a model-based visual tracking system. Secondly, a systematical approach is proposed to construct a few individual PDMs generated on the basis of the projection relation. Finally, the modular active shape model(MASM) is designed to integrate the results of the PCA on the individually generated PDMs.