A new Local-Main-Gradient-Orientation HOG and contour differences based algorithm for object classification

This paper presents a new algorithm to better classify objects in videos. In our case, the objects are cars, vans, and people on the roads. First, in order to extract the moving objects more precisely, we have proposed a method for foreground extraction based on the contour differences between the video frame and the background image. Second, after we got the integrated moving object, we have proposed a new algorithm to extract better features from the object. The new algorithm is based on two extended Histogram of Oriented Gradient (HOG) descriptor. We have improved HOG in two aspects: (a) selecting the gradient information from the moving objects and discarding the background gradient; (b) weighting every bin of gradient orientation histogram according to their significance within predefined area, in order to emphasize the important gradient information. We obtained Contour-Difference HOG (CD-HOG) from the first extension and Local-Main-Gradient-Orientation HOG (LMGO-HOG) from the second extended HOG. These extensions can cope with the cluttered background and make the features more distinguishable. Each of the extended HOG descriptors can produce a satisfying performance separately and an even better one if they are applied in cascade. From extensive evaluations, we showed the wonderful performance of our algorithm, and the accuracy rate of 94.04% can be achieved in some cases.