Patent ID: 7391907

Claim:
A computer-readable medium comprising software to detect spurious objects, which when executed by a computer system, cause the computer system to perform operations comprising a method of: detecting an object in frames of a video sequence to obtain a detected object; tracking said detected object in said frames of said video sequence to obtain a tracked object; classifying said tracked object as a real object or a spurious object based on at least one of: a shape consistency metric, including: extracting an enlarged view (blob) of said object for each of two frames; creating a mask for each blob; computing a centroid for each blob; aligning said masks by said centroids, whereby an aligned mask is created; and computing an overlap ratio from said aligned mask from a number of overlapping pixels in the aligned mask and a total number of pixels in said aligned mask, a size consistency metric, including: measuring a number of pixels in said detected object in each of two frames; and computing the ratio of said number of pixels in each of said two frames, a texture consistency metric, a color consistency metric, including: computing a color histogram of said object in a plurality of frames, wherein said color histogram for n previous frames is a vector with m elements, where each element of said vector represents a value of said color histogram; computing a color consistency vector using color histogram vectors for two frames; and computing a color consistency metric based on said color consistency vector and m, an intensity consistency metric, a speed consistency metric, including: computing an instantaneous speed of said object in two frames; and computing a speed consistency metric based on a change in said instantaneous speed in said two frames, a direction of motion consistency metric, including: computing an instantaneous direction of motion of said object in two frames; and computing a direction of motion consistency metric based on a change in said instantaneous direction of motion in said two frames, a salient motion metric, an absolute motion metric, or a persistent motion metric of said tracked object.