Color-based video stabilization for real-time on-board object detection on high-speed trains

This paper is concerned with a particular application of image stabilization. Image stabilization is a necessary step to reduce the effect of camera motion when, as in this case, image sequences are acquired from a mobile platform. In this work, in order to find an efficient motion estimator, two one-dimensional characteristic curves are extracted from each video frame. Such curves are then compared in consequent frames to estimate image displacement. The proposed algorithm is suitable for real time processing and provides good performance; in order to verify its validity, it has been tested on a variety of color video-sequences taken from the point of view of trains moving along railways tracks. Results are provided in order to compare the proposed approach with a feature-based stabilization method.