Tracking-by-Counting: Using Network Flows on Crowd Density Maps for Tracking Multiple Targets

Weihong Ren, Xinchao Wang, Jiandong Tian, Yandong Tang, Antoni B. Chan*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Journal Publications and ReviewsRGC 21 - Publication in refereed journalpeer-review

89 Citations (Scopus)
27 Downloads (CityUHK Scholars)

Abstract

State-of-the-art multi-object tracking (MOT) methods follow the tracking-by-detection paradigm, where object trajectories are obtained by associating per-frame outputs of object detectors. In crowded scenes, however, detectors often fail to obtain accurate detections due to heavy occlusions and high crowd density. In this paper, we propose a new MOT paradigm, tracking-by-counting, tailored for crowded scenes. Using crowd density maps, we jointly model detection, counting, and tracking of multiple targets as a network flow program, which simultaneously finds the global optimal detections and trajectories of multiple targets over the whole video. This is in contrast to prior MOT methods that either ignore the crowd density and thus are prone to errors in crowded scenes, or rely on a suboptimal two-step process using heuristic density-aware point-tracks for matching targets. Our approach yields promising results on public benchmarks of various domains including people tracking, cell tracking, and fish tracking.
Original languageEnglish
Article number9298464
Pages (from-to)1439-1452
JournalIEEE Transactions on Image Processing
Volume30
Online published17 Dec 2020
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2021

Research Keywords

  • crowd density map
  • flow tracking
  • multiple people tracking
  • People tracking

Publisher's Copyright Statement

  • COPYRIGHT TERMS OF DEPOSITED POSTPRINT FILE: © 2020 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. Ren, W., Wang, X., Tian, J., Tang, Y., & Chan, A. B. (2021). Tracking-by-Counting: Using Network Flows on Crowd Density Maps for Tracking Multiple Targets. IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, 30, 1439-1452. Article 9298464. https://doi.org/10.1109/TIP.2020.3044219

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  • GRF: Wide-area Crowd Counting on Camera Networks using Multi-view Fusion

    CHAN, A. B. (Principal Investigator / Project Coordinator)

    1/09/1827/02/23

    Project: Research

  • TBRS: Safety, Reliability, and Disruption Management of High Speed Rail and Metro Systems

    XIE, M. (Principal Investigator / Project Coordinator), BENSOUSSAN, A. (Co-Principal Investigator), LO, S. M. (Co-Principal Investigator), SHOU, B. (Co-Principal Investigator), SINGPURWALLA, N. D. (Co-Principal Investigator), TSE, W. T. P. (Co-Principal Investigator), TSUI, K. L. (Co-Principal Investigator), YU, Y. (Co-Principal Investigator), YUEN, K. K. R. (Co-Principal Investigator), CHAN, A. B. (Co-Investigator), CHAN, N.-H. (Co-Investigator), CHIN, K. S. (Co-Investigator), CHOW, H. A. (Co-Investigator), Chow, W. K. (Co-Investigator), EDESESS, M. (Co-Investigator), GOLDSMAN, D. M. (Co-Investigator), Huang, J. (Co-Investigator), LEE, W. M. (Co-Investigator), LI, L. (Co-Investigator), LI, C. L. (Co-Investigator), LING, M. H. A. (Co-Investigator), LIU, S. (Co-Investigator), MURAKAMI, J. (Co-Investigator), NG, S. Y. S. (Co-Investigator), NI, M. C. (Co-Investigator), TAN, M.H.-Y. (Co-Investigator), Wang, W. (Co-Investigator), Wang, J. (Co-Investigator), WONG, C. K. (Co-Investigator), WONG, S. Y. Z. (Co-Investigator), WONG, S. C. (Co-Investigator), Xu, Z. (Co-Investigator), ZHANG, Z. (Co-Investigator), Zhang, D. (Co-Investigator), ZHAO, J. L. (Co-Investigator) & Zhou, Q. (Co-Investigator)

    1/01/1631/12/21

    Project: Research

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