Regions merging based on robust statistical testing

This paper addresses the problem of finding moving objects present in an image sequence. More specifically, a method is proposed to merge regions based on a coherent motion criterion. A modified Kolmogorov-Smirnov test is proposed which exploits both the motion information present in the residual distribution and the motion information of the motion parameter space. Therefore, all the available motion information is used. Moreover, the proposed test is consistent with robust motion estimation. Using the modified Kolmogorov- Smirnov test, the graph of the relationships between the different regions is built. The graph also integrates spatial information as only adjacent regions are allowed to merge. Two graph clustering rules are proposed which enable us to robustly define the moving objects. The proposed method does not require any user input. Simulation results demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed method.