Spatio-temporal Data Augmentation for Visual Surveillance

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel spatio-temporal data augmentation technique for deep learning-based visual surveillance, improving detection performance in challenging scenarios like static foregrounds and shadows across different environments.

Contribution

It proposes new spatio-temporal data augmentation methods tailored for surveillance, enhancing robustness and accuracy of deep learning models in diverse and difficult conditions.

Findings

Improved detection of static foregrounds and ghost objects.

Superior performance over existing algorithms in multiple datasets.

Enhanced robustness across different environments.

Abstract

Visual surveillance aims to stably detect a foreground object using a continuous image acquired from a fixed camera. Recent deep learning methods based on supervised learning show superior performance compared to classical background subtraction algorithms. However, there is still a room for improvement in static foreground, dynamic background, hard shadow, illumination changes, camouflage, etc. In addition, most of the deep learning-based methods operates well on environments similar to training. If the testing environments are different from training ones, their performance degrades. As a result, additional training on those operating environments is required to ensure a good performance. Our previous work which uses spatio-temporal input data consisted of a number of past images, background images and current image showed promising results in different environments from training, although it uses a simple U-NET structure. In this paper, we propose a data augmentation technique suitable for visual surveillance for additional performance improvement using the same network used in our previous work. In deep learning, most data augmentation techniques deal with spatial-level data augmentation techniques for use in image classification and object detection. In this paper, we propose a new method of data augmentation in the spatio-temporal dimension suitable for our previous work. Two data augmentation methods of adjusting background model images and past images are proposed. Through this, it is shown that performance can be improved in difficult areas such as static foreground and ghost objects, compared to previous studies. Through quantitative and qualitative evaluation using SBI, LASIESTA, and our own dataset, we show that it gives superior performance compared to deep learning-based algorithms and background subtraction algorithms.