LOCAL ESTIMATION OF DISPLACEMENT DENSITY
FOR ABNORMAL BEHAVIOR DETECTION
P.L.M. Boutte/roy, A. Bouzerdoum, S.L. Phung
SECTE, Faculty of informatics,
Wollongong University,
Northfields Av., Wollongong, 2522 NSW, Australia.
ABSTRACT
Detecting abnormal behavior in video sequences has be-
come a crucial task with the development of automatic video-
surveillance systems. Here, we propose an algorithm which
locally models the probability distribution of objects be-
havioral features. A temporal Gaussian mixture with lo-
cal update is introduced to estimate the local probability
distribution. The update of the feature probability distribu-
tion is thus temporal and local, allowing a smooth transition
for neighboring locations. The integration of local infor-
mation in the estimation provides a fast adaptation along
with an efficient discrimination between normal and abnor-
mal behavior. The proposed technique is evaluated on both
synthetic and real data. Synthetic data simulates different
scenarios occurring in road traffic, and illustrates how the
model adapts to local conditions. Real data demonstrates
the ability of the system to detect abnormal behavior due to
the presence of pedestrians and animals on highways. In all
tested scenarios the system identifies abnormal and normal
behavior correctly.
1. INTRODUCTION
The last decade witnessed a rise in the development of ab-
normal behavior detection (ABD) systems due to the in-
creasing demand in visual surveillance and security. The
outcomes of ABD development are tremendous, leading to
automatic and instantaneous notification of abnormal events
in public places. Abnormal behavior detection is a challeng-
ing problem because it is a high-level process requiring the
integration of various techniques such as feature selection,
trajectory modeling, dimensionality reduction and density
estimation. Moreover, most of these fields are still active
areas of research; global optimal solutions are yet to be
found for many problems. Abnormal behavior detection al-
gorithms can be divided into two sub-categories: algorithms
concerned with the characterization of the body posture and
those concerned with the analysis of object trajectories. The
algorithm proposed in this paper falls in the latter category.
A. Beghdadi
L2TI, Institut Galilee, Univ. Paris 13,
99, avenue J. B. Clement,
93430 Villetaneuse, France.
Trajectory-based analysis is concerned with modeling
the distribution of objects' feature vectors consisting of the
object coordinates and behavioral features such as vector
flow, object size, colors, etc. This combination of local
and behavioral features determines whether the behavior is
normal or not. ABD techniques traditionally rely upon the
learning of a global distribution of the feature vector over
the entire feature space, regardless of the nature of the fea-
ture (local or behavioral). Hidden Markov models are typi-
cally used to model the global distribution [1, 2, 3]. Neural
networks have also been used for ABD with some success
[4]. In particular, self organizing maps (SOMs) have at-
tracted attention due to their ability to preserve the topol-
ogy of the input data [5, 6]. Johnson and Hogg have also
proposed to model the probability distribution of a feature
vector composed of the position and the vector flow of the
object using a competitive neural network [7] and a global
Gaussian mixture model [8].
The algorithm proposed herein differs from the afore-
mentioned techniques in that the local (or position) feature
vector is not integrated in the distribution estimate but is
rather used as a parameter to index the pdf estimate. A map
of local probability distributions for the behavioral features
is thus generated. The benefits are twofold: first, the dimen-
sionality of the feature vector is reduced; second, integrat-
ing the local feature in the distribution estimate augments
the rate of false detection for abnormal behavior. Indeed,
global estimation of local feature is, by definition, inade-
quate. The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 fo-
cuses on the probability density modeling with Gaussian
mixtures. In particular, subsection 2.2 introduces the con-
cept of spatio-temporal Gaussian mixture applied to behav-
ioral features. Subsection 2.3 is concerned with the update
equations of the spatio-temporal Gaussian mixture. Sec-
tion 3 presents experimental results for abnormal behavior
detection using synthetic and real data, followed by the con-
clusion in Section 4.
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