Visual tracking using Snake based on target´s contour information

An active contour model, Snake, was developed as a useful segmenting and tracking tool for rigid or non-rigid (i.e. deformable) objects by Kass (1987). Snake is designed on the basis of Snake energies. Segmenting and tracking can be executed successfully by the process of energy minimization. Kass´ Snake can be applied to the case of small changes between images because its solutions can be achieved on the basis of a variational approach. If a somewhat fast moving object exists in successive images, Kass´ Snake will not operate well because the moving object may have large differences in its position or form between successive images. Snake´s nodes may fall into the local minima in their motion to the new positions of the target object in next image. When the motion is too large to apply image flow energy to tracking, a jump mode is proposed for solving the problem. The vector used to make Snake´s nodes jump to the new location can be obtained by processing the image flow. The effectiveness of the proposed Snake is confirmed by some simulations