Mean Shift Object Tracking using a 4D Kernel and Linear Prediction

A new mean shift tracker which tracks not only the position but also the size and orientation of an object is presented. By using a four-dimensional kernel, the mean shift iterations are performed in a four-dimensional search space consisting of the image coordinates, a scale and an orientation dimension. Thus, the enhanced mean shift tracker tracks the position, size and orientation of an object simultaneously. To increase the tracking performance by using the information about the position, size and orientation of the object in the previous frames, a linear prediction is also integrated into the 4D kernel tracker. The tracking performance is further improved by considering the gradient norm as an additional object feature.