Automatic moving object detecting and tracking from astronomical CCD image sequences

The paper presents an efficient and low-cost method for automatically detecting and tracking the moving object from astronomical CCD image sequences, using a combination of active contours and shape feature similarities. An object detection algorithm is firstly implemented following some image preprocessing steps, in order to locate all the major objects in each image. Next, an object tracking method based on greedy snake algorithm is proposed so that all the detected objects are able to be correctly tracked. Finally, the moving object in the image sequence is identified by applying a shape feature similarity matching operation. Experimental results are also illustrated to demonstrate the capability of proposed method to perform correct tracking in different situations.