Method and apparatus for tracking an object using a continuously adapting mean shift

摘要

A tracking method is disclosed. The method of the present invention tracks a object using a probability distribution of the desired object. The method operates by first calculating a mean location of a probability distribution within a search window. Next, the search window is centered on the calculated mean location. The steps of calculating a mean location and centering the search window may be performed until convergence. The search window may then be resized. Successive iterations of calculating a mean, centering on the mean, and resizing the search window track an object represented by the probability distribution. In one embodiment, a flesh hue probability distribution is generated from an input video image. The flesh hue probability distribution is used to track a human head within the video image.