SAP: A robust approach to track objects in video streams with Snakes And Points.

This paper presents a robust and generic approach of object tracking in video sequences. Here, the object to track is described by considering two wellknown image primitives: first, its content is described with Points of interest. Such points are automatically extracted and then characterized according to a selective spatial appearance-based model. Second, the object envelope is described with a Snake. The originality of the SAP approach consists in a complementary use of these two primitives: the snake allows to reduce the points tracking to a limited area in each frame, and the spatial point description is exploited during the snake tracking, making the process robust to wide occlusions. Since no model of trajectory is considered, the approach is robust to wide motions of object and camera. The relevance of this approach has been evaluated on several video streams. Results obtained with the most representative of them are presented in this paper. The algorithms involved have been implemented with the aim of achieving near real-time performance.