Abstract: Video object extraction is a key technology in the content-based video coding. A new temporal-spatial video object segmentation algorithm is proposed. This algorithm is based on 2-D mesh-based motion analysis according to motion connectivity. Firstly, a 2-D adaptive mesh fitting the original frame image is obtained via the feature detection algorithm. Then, a higher order statistics motion analysis according to motion connectivity is made of the 2-D mesh representation to get a coarse motion boundary layer. After refining the coarse boundary layer and post-processing the labeled maximal connected region, the final segmenting mask is quickly obtained. Hence the video object is effectively extracted. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm combines the merits of the mesh-based segmentation algorithms and the pixel-based segmentation algorithms, and therefore achieves satisfactory subjective and objective performance as well as increasing the speed of segmentation.

Key words: video object extraction, 2-D mesh, motion connectivity