The methods for the segmentation of foreground objects of video images have been developed further since establishment of the conventional color keying methods that required an image background that was colored in a certain manner. Presently used methods are also limited. The program Pfinder for example requires certain information with respect to the form and texture of the foreground object. For the approach of M. Bichsel it is necessary to mark individual background zones. The inventive method facilitates the segmentation of objects of any shape or texture and with any number of holes as long as the color values of the foreground and the background are not identical in a certain image element. For a segmentation of foreground objects the difference between the image to be analyzed and the background image calculated by the average value of several takes of the individual image pixels is compared with a threshold value that is fixed to the maximum noise. Changes of brightness in the background of the image are compensated by adaptation and the adaptation is linked with the segmentation in such a manner that the method works precisely and stably. If several color channels are evaluated, only matching results are used for further analysis.
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