REAL-TIME TRACKING OF AN OBJECT OF INTEREST USING A HYBRID OPTICAL AND VIRTUAL ZOOMING MECHANISM

摘要

A video processing system tracks an object of interest using a hybrid combination of (i) optical zooming by a pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) camera, and (ii) virtual zooming on an image generated by that camera. The object of interest (22-k) is initially detected in an image (40) generated by the camera (18). An optical zooming operation (34) then adjusts pan and tilt settings to frame the object of interest (22-k), and zooms in on the object of interest (22-k) until one or more designated stopping criteria are met. A virtual zooming operation (36) processes the resulting optically-zoomed image (44) to identify and extract a particular region of interest (47), and then interpolates the extracted region of interest to generate a virtually-zoomed image (46). The designated stopping criteria may indicate, e.g., that the optical zooming continues until the object of interest (22-k) occupies a fixed or dynamic percentage of the resulting optically-zoomed image.