Intelligent Retrieval of Surveillance Imagery

The Phase I of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program culminated in the development of an Intelligent Video Retrieval System (IVRS) with the capabilities of automated target detection and tracking, target geo-referencing, target categorization by example, and multi-target interaction recognition. In addition, graphical tools were developed for intuitive query formulation and result visualization. At the end of Phase I, the ObjectVideo (OV) team consulted customers of surveillance products in order to determine additional capabilities whose inclusion in the IVRS will make it invaluable for video analysts and security personnel. In Phase II, the OV team will develop the following capabilities for IVRS: (a) Virtual target tagging, (b) Target mensuration, (c) Site-wide multi-camera multi-target behavior analysis and threat detection, (d) Multi-view target retrieval by example, (e) Context-sensitive event detection, and (f) Threat forecasting using event correlation. In addition, a powerful query language will be developed that allows the video analysts to formulate complex queries based on logical combinations of target features, temporal constraints and scene context. Overall, the objective of this effort is to provide sophisticated tools for video retrieval to aid security/intelligence personnel in forensic analysis, in both maritime and urban surveillance domains.