Spectral-360: A Physics-Based Technique for Change Detection

Abstract

This paper presents and assesses a novel physics-based change detection technique, Spectral-360, which is based on the dichromatic color reflectance model. This approach, uses image formation models to computationally estimate, from the camera output, a consistent physics-based color descriptor of the spectral reflectance of surfaces visible in the image, and then to measure the similarity between the full-spectrum reflectance of the background and foreground pixels to segment the foreground from a static background. This method represents a new approach to change detection, using explicit hypotheses about the physics that create images. The assumptions which have been made are that diffuse-only-reflection is applicable, and the existence of a dominant illuminant. The objective evaluation performed using the 'changedetection.net 2014' dataset shows that our Spectral-360 method outperforms most state-of-the-art methods.