Comparison of different template matching algorithms in high speed sports motion tracking

Tracking sports motion is a challenging task. This paper presents a comparison of different template matching methods that can be used in such motion tracking applications. Six methods were tested with dynamic and still background conditions. Their performance is analyzed using different video sequences obtained by considering sports such as table tennis, weightlifting, 100m athletics and high jump. Comparison is carried out by means of statistical methods to compare the six different template matching algorithms with the ground truth in terms of accuracy and processing time. The results indicate that, even though there are no statistically significant differences among different template matching algorithms, four out of the six methods have perfect matches with ground truth with respect to the accuracy. Among the six methods considered, the squared difference method is found to be the best in terms of processing time.