Automatic detection and removal of static shadows

In case of complex textures,existing static shadow detection and removal algorithms are prone to false detection of the pixels.To solve this problem,a static shadow detection and removal algorithm based on support vector machine(SVM)and region sub-block matching is proposed.Firstly,the original image is segmented into several superpixels,and these superpixels are clustered using mean-shift clustering algorithm in the superpixel sets.Secondly,these features such as color,texture,brightness,intensity and similarity of each area are extracted.These features are used as input of SVM to obtain shadow binary images through training in non-operational state.Thirdly,soft matting is used to smooth the boundary of shadow binary graph.Finally,after finding the best matching sub-block for shadow sub-block in the illumination region based on regional covariance feature and spatial distance,the shadow weighted average factor is introduced to partially correct the sub-block,and the light recovery operator is used to partially light the sub-block.The experimental results show the number of false detection of the pixels is reduced.In addition,it can remove shadows effectively for the image with rich textures and uneven shadows and make a natural transition at the boundary between shadow and light.

VEHICLE SEGMENTATION AND SHADOW HANDLER BASED ON EXTREMUM IMAGE

The shadows similar to the vehicle and the spots caused by vehicle lamps need to be accurately detected in the vehicle segmentation involved in the video-based traffic parameter measurement. Generally, the road surface is different from the vehicle surface in the gray-level architecture. An invariant gray-level architecture-the extremum image in the changing illumination environment is derived and a novel algorithm is presented for detecting shadows and spots. The gray-level structure that is not sensitive to the illumination is employed in the algorithm and the road surface mistaken as vehicles can be removed.

Moving Shadow Detection and Removal for Traffic Sequences

Segmentation of moving objects in a video sequence is a basic task for application of computer vision. However, shadows extracted along with the objects can result in large errors in object localization and recognition. In this paper, we propose a method of moving shadow detection based on edge information, which can effectively detect the cast shadow of a moving vehicle in a traffic scene. Having confirmed shadows existing in a figure, we execute the shadow removal algorithm proposed in this paper to segment the shadow from the foreground. The shadow eliminating algorithm removes the boundary of the cast shadow and preserves object edges firstly; secondly, it reconstructs coarse object shapes based on the edge information of objects; and finally, it extracts the cast shadow by subtracting the moving object from the change detection mask and performs further processing. The proposed method has been further tested on images taken under different shadow orientations, vehicle colors and vehicle sizes, and the results have revealed that shadows can be successfully eliminated and thus good video segmentation can be obtained.

A NEW METHOD OF MOVING OBJECT DETECTION AND SHADOW REMOVING

This paper presents an adaptive method of objects and shadows detection in video streams. Models of background are firstly set up and adaptively updated in Hue Saturation Intensity (HSI) color space to detect motion regions. Then, detection errors are dealt with by motion continuity and velocity consistency. Finally, cast shadows are removed by the generic properties of luminance, chrominance and gradient density. Experimental results and their evaluation are presented to verify the effectiveness of this new method.

Cast shadow detection for moving objects based on binocular stereo vision

A novel cast shadow detection approach was proposed.A stereo vision system was used to capture images instead of traditional single camera.It was based on an assumption that cast shadows were on a special plane.The image obtained from one camera was inversely projected to the plane and then transformed to the view from another camera.The points on the plane shared the same position between original image and the transformed image.As a result,the cast shadows can be detected.In order to improve the efficiency of cast shadow detection and decrease computational complexity,the obvious object areas in CIELAB color space were removed and the potential shadow areas were obtained.Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach can detect cast shadows accurately even under various illuminations.

Shadow Detection and Removal From Photo-Realistic Synthetic Urban Image Using Deep Learning

Recently,virtual reality technology that can interact with various data is used for urban design and analysis.Reality,one of the most important elements in virtual reality technology,means visual expression so that a person can experience three-dimensional space like reality.To obtain this realism,real-world data are used in the various fields.For example,in order to increase the realism of 3D modeled building textures real aerial images are utilized in 3D modelling.However,the aerial image captured during the day can be shadowed by the sun and it can cause the distortion or deterioration of image.To resolve this problem,researches on detecting and removing shadows have been conducted,but the detecting and removing shadow is still considered as a challenging problem.In this paper,we propose a novel method for detecting and removing shadows using deep learning.For this work,we first a build a new dataset of photo-realistic synthetic urban data based on the virtual environment using 3D spatial information provided by VWORLD.For detecting and removing shadow from the dataset,firstly,the 1-channel shadow mask image is inferred from the 3-channel shadow image through the CNN.Then,to generate a shadow-free image,a 3-channel shadow image and a detected 1-channel shadow mask into the GAN is executed.From the experiments,we can prove that the proposed method outperforms the existing methods in detecting and removing shadow.

BACKGROUND RECONSTRUCTION AND OBJECT EXTRACTION BASED ON COLOR AND OBJECT TRACKING

In YCbCr colorspace, a method is proposed to reconstruct the background and extract moving objects based on the Gaussian model of chroma components. Background model is updated according to changes of chroma components. In order to eliminate the disturbance of shadow, a shadow detecting principle is proposed in YCbCr colorspace. A Kalman filter is introduced to estimate objects＇ positions in the image and then the pedestrian is tracked according to its information of shape. Experiments show that the background reconstruction and updating are successful, object extraction and shadow suppression are satisfactory, and real-time and reliable tracking is realized.

An efficient approach for shadow detection based on Gaussian mixture model

An efficient approach was proposed for discriminating shadows from moving objects. In the background subtraction stage, moving objects were extracted. Then, the initial classification for moving shadow pixels and foreground object pixels was performed by using color invariant features. In the shadow model learning stage, instead of a single Gaussian distribution, it was assumed that the density function computed on the values of chromaticity difference or bright difference, can be modeled as a mixture of Gaussian consisting of two density functions. Meanwhile, the Gaussian parameter estimation was performed by using EM algorithm. The estimates were used to obtain shadow mask according to two constraints. Finally, experiments were carried out. The visual experiment results confirm the effectiveness of proposed method. Quantitative results in terms of the shadow detection rate and the shadow discrimination rate(the maximum values are 85.79% and 97.56%, respectively) show that the proposed approach achieves a satisfying result with post-processing step.

Shadow detection combining characters of human vision

A shadow detection method using pulse couple neural network inspired by the characters of human visual system is proposed.More precisely,lateral inhibition of human vision and coefficient of variation are combined together to improve the pulse couple neural network.Shadow detection is considered to be a shadow region segmentation problem.Experiment shows that the presented method is consistent with human vision compared to shadow detection methods based on HSV and pulse couple neural network(PCNN) by both subjective and objective assessments.

Shadow Detection and Compensation for Color Aerial Images

A method for shadow detection and compensation for color aerial images is presented. It is considered that the intensity value of each image pixel is the product of illumination function and ground object reflection, and the shadowed regions on the image are mainly caused by the short of illumination, so the information compensation for the shadowed regions should concentrate on the illumination adjustment of concerned area on the basis of the analysis of whole image. The shadow detection and compensation procedure proposed by this paper consists of four steps.

The automatic height extraction of buildings from shadow region

Height extraction for buildings is a fundamental step of 3D scene reconstruction in many virtual reality applications. In this paper, we propose an automatic method to extract the height of buildings in high resolution satellite imagery based on the length of shadow. Taking into account the limitation of traditional algorithms, we make use of the boundary information of a building to facilitate detecting and matching the shadow regions with higher accuracy. Then, we introduce a shadow-cast model to correct the shadow location in our system. The experimental result shows that when extracting the height of buildings from complex urban regions, our method has better accuracy.

A novel water index for urban high-resolution eight-band WorldView-2 imagery

Land surface water mapping is one of the most important remote-sensing applications.However,water areas are spectrally similar and overlapped with shadow,making accurate water extraction from remote-sensing images still a challenging problem.This paper develops a novel water index named as NDWI-MSI,combining a new normalized difference water index(NDWI)and a recently developed morphological shadow index(MSI),to delineate water bodies from eight-band WorldView-2 imagery.The newly available bands(e.g.coastal,yellow,red-edge,and near-infrared 2)of WorldView-2 imagery provide more potential for constructing new NDWIs derived from various band combinations.Through our testing,a new NDWI is defined in this study.In addition,MSI,a recently developed automatic shadow extraction index from high-resolution imagery can be used to indicate shadow areas.The NDWI-MSI is created by combining NDWI and MSI,which is able to highlight water bodies and simultaneously suppress shadow areas.In experiments,it is shown that the new water index can achieve better performance than traditional NDWI,and even supervised classifiers,for example,maximum likelihood classifier,and support vector machine.

Shadow regions detection algorithm by adaptive narrowband two-phase Chan-Vese model

An adaptive narrowband two-phase Chan-Vese （ANBCV） model is proposed for improving the shadow regions detection performance of sonar images. In the first noise smoothing step, the anisotropic second-order neighborhood MRF （Markov Random Field, MRF） is used to describe the image texture feature parameters. Then, initial two-class segmentation is processed with the block mode k-means clustering algorithm, to estimate the approximate position of the shadow regions. On this basis, the zero level set function is adaptively initialized by the approximate position of shadow regions. ANBCV model is provided to complete local optimization for eliminating the image global interference and obtaining more accurate results. Experimental results show that the new algorithm can efficiently remove partial noise, increase detection speed and accuracy, and with less human intervention.