Finding camera overlap in large surveillance networks

Abstract

Recent research on video surveillance across multiple cameras has typically focused on camera networks of the order of 10 cameras. In this paper we argue that existing systems do not scale to a network of hundreds, or thousands, of cameras. We describe the design and deployment of an algorithm called exclusion that is specifically aimed at finding correspondence between regions in cameras for large camera networks. The information recovered by exclusion can be used as the basis for other surveillance tasks such as tracking people through the network, or as an aid to human inspection. We have run this algorithm on a campus network of over 100 cameras, and report on its performance and accuracy over this network. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.