Background Subtraction with Dirichlet Process Mixture Models

Video analysis often begins with background subtraction. This problem is often approached in two steps - a background model followed by a regularisation scheme. A model of the background allows it to be distinguished on a per-pixel basis from the foreground, whilst the regularisation combines information from adjacent pixels. We present a new method based on Dirichlet process
Gaussian mixture models, which are used to estimate per-pixel background distributions. It is followed by probabilistic regularisation. Using a non-parametric Bayesian method allows per-pixel mode counts to be automatically inferred, avoiding over-/under- fitting. We also develop novel model learning algorithms for continuous update of the model in a principled fashion as the scene changes. These key advantages enable us to outperform the state-of-the-art alternatives on four benchmarks.