A soccer field tracking method with wire frame model from TV images

This paper proposes a tracking method of soccer field area in a soccer video captured from TV. The camera taking the soccer game video is controlled by three parameters: its mount position, the angle, and the magnification. In order to estimate these three parameters, the proposed method designs a wire frame model, which represents the official layout of the soccer field lines; and by the wire frame model matching with the field area in the video, the above three parameters can be estimated, even if the soccer video includes the camera panning, zooming, etc. By using the estimated parameters, we can accurately obtain where the field area corresponds in the actual soccer field. Some experiments in tracking the field area in actual soccer videos are performed and their results verify the high performance of the proposed method.