Background Subtraction: Experiments and Improvements for ViBe

Motion detection plays an important role in most video based applications. One of the many possible ways to detect motion consists in background subtraction.

This paper discusses experiments led for a particular background subtraction technique called ViBe. This technique models the background with a set of samples for each pixel and compares new frames, pixel by pixel, to determine if a pixel belongs to the background or to the foreground.

In its original version, the scope of ViBe is limited to background modeling. In this paper, we introduce a series of modifications that alter the working of ViBe, like the inhibition of propagation around internal borders or the distinction between the updating and segmentation masks, or process the output, for example by some operations on the connected components. Experimental results obtained for video sequences provided on the workshop site validate the improvements of the proposed modifications.