Ice-hockey puck detection and tracking for video highlighting

Yakut M., Kehtarnavaz N.

SIGNAL IMAGE AND VIDEO PROCESSING, vol.10, no.3, pp.527-533, 2016 (SCI-Expanded) identifier identifier

  • Publication Type: Article / Article
  • Volume: 10 Issue: 3
  • Publication Date: 2016
  • Doi Number: 10.1007/s11760-015-0764-6
  • Journal Name: SIGNAL IMAGE AND VIDEO PROCESSING
  • Journal Indexes: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Scopus
  • Page Numbers: pp.527-533
  • Kocaeli University Affiliated: No

Abstract

Detection and tracking of ice-hockey pucks are of interest to sports industry as it allows puck highlighting during broadcast. This paper presents the first attempt at using image processing to detect and track ice-hockey pucks. The technique developed consists of using three pieces of information in ice-hockey video frames. A combination of adaptive gray-level thresholding, adaptive temporal thresholding, and trajectory constraints is used to detect and track pucks. The analysis performed indicates the difficulties of this detection problem when using ice-hockey broadcast video sequences. A comparison of the developed technique is provided with table tennis broadcast video sequences to demonstrate its effectiveness.