Real-time Visual Tracking under Arbitrary Illumination Changes

In this paper, we investigate how to improve the robustness of visual tracking methods with respect to generic lighting changes. We propose a new approach to the direct image alignment of either Lambertian or non-Lambertian objects under shadows, inter-reflections, glints as well as ambient, diffuse and specular reflections which may vary in power, type, number and space. The method is based on a proposed model of illumination changes together with an appropriate geometric model of image motion. The parameters related to these models are obtained through an efficient second-order optimization technique which minimizes directly the intensity discrepancies. Comparison results with existing direct methods show significant improvements in the tracking performance. Extensive experiments confirm the robustness and reliability of our method.