A 3-D surveillance system using multiple integrated cameras

Conventional surveillance systems usually use multiple screens to display acquired video streams and may cause trouble to keep track of targets due to the lack of spatial relationship among the screens. This paper presents an effective and efficient surveillance system that can integrate multiple video contents into one single comprehensive view. To visualize the monitored area, the proposed system uses planar patches to approximate the 3-D model of the monitored environment and displays the video contents of cameras by applying dynamic texture mapping on the model. It is an efficient method for interactive 3-D monitoring of the environment without complicated procedures like camera calibration or 3-D model reconstruction. Moreover, moving objects are extracted through foreground segmentation and then visualized through axis-aligned billboarding. In this way, the system provides security guards a better situational awareness of the monitored site, including the activities of the tracking targets.