Abstract:

Detecting small low-contrast targets is a difficult hotspot, especially in underwater videos captured by moving remoteoperated vehicles. According to the features of seabed videos, a small-targets detection method based on background subtraction and a saliency map was proposed. The saliency map was used to improve the contrast of targets that were still not clear enough after background subtraction and to make them easier to be segmented from the background. Whether or not the targets appeared in the video was determined with the prior knowledge about the largest number of subjects in a singleframe to avoid wrong detection and improve the stability of the detection system. Experimental results showed that unclear objects could be better detected with the proposed method than with conventional background subtraction.

Key words: background subtraction, saliency map, moving target detection