Stance-based strike zone shaping and visualization in broadcast baseball video: Providing reference for pitch location positioning

In baseball, the strike zone plays an important role in each pitch. Pitches which pass through the strike zone count as strikes, three of which strike out the batter. Thus, pitchers should acquire mastery of the strike zone. Moreover, the strike zone also provides the reference for positioning the pitch locations, about which sports fans and professionals have an intense interest in compile statistics. This paper presents a stance-based approach for strike zone shaping and visualization in broadcast baseball video. We design efficient and effective algorithms to detect the home plate, contour the batter, locate the features points on the batter contour, and finally outline the strike zone. The experiments show that the proposed framework is able to shape the strike zone fairly well in various broadcast baseball video sequences, needless of manual operation and additional camera setting.