Patent ID: 7929613

Claim:
An apparatus for tracking moving objects in time-series pictures, comprising: a non-transitory storage device for storing the time-series pictures and a program; and a processor coupled to the storage device, wherein the program makes the processor read and process the time-series pictures to track the moving objects in the pictures, and by the processing, each picture is divided into blocks, each block consisting of a plurality of pixels, in a case where an object-identification code of a moving object is assigned in a block unit, and a motion vector of a moving object is determined in a block unit, and wherein object-identification codes of a plurality of moving objects on a picture at a time t 1 have been determined, and the program enables the processor to perform the steps of: determining each object-identification code and moving vector as approximate values of each of the blocks on a picture at a time t 2 on the basis of a first estimation function, and determining a value of a second estimation function using the approximate values; determining each object-identification code and moving vector as a solution of each of the blocks on the basis of an approximately-optimum sum of the first and second estimation functions, wherein the approximately-optimum sum is obtained by changing the approximate values within a given range; wherein the first estimation function has the sum of a sub-estimation function for determining a moving vector by block matching between a current block on the picture at the time t 2 and a region on the picture at the time t 1 and a sub-estimation function for determining an object-identification code of the current block on the basis of a count of pixels belonging to the same object-identification code within the region, wherein the second estimation function includes respective absolute values of differences between the motion vector MV between the current block and the region and a motion vector of each of the blocks around the current block, each of the blocks having the same object-identification code as that of the current block, and takes a more optimum value when the sum of the absolute values is smaller.