Occupant Detection through Near-Infrared Imaging

Xiaoli Hao; Houjin Chen; Yongyi Yang; Chang Yao; Heng Yang; Na Yang

doi:10.6180/jase.2011.14.3.11

Occupant Detection through Near-Infrared Imaging

Xiaoli Hao This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.¹ , Houjin Chen¹ , Yongyi Yang² , Chang Yao¹ , Heng Yang¹ and Na Yang¹

¹School of Electronic and Information Engineering, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, P.R. China
²Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL 60616, USA

Received: December 17, 2010
Accepted: February 15, 2011
Publication Date: September 1, 2011

Download Citation: ||https://doi.org/10.6180/jase.2011.14.3.11

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates a method to detect and count occupants in vehicles, the purpose of which is to facilitate the task of monitoring and counting of vehicle occupants either by human screeners or by pattern recognition algorithms. The proposed near-infrared (NIR) imaging method can effectively deal with the challenge due to poor light conditions, windshield reflection, tinted windows and shadows on windshields to improve the clarity of the captured image of the vehicle interior. We also proposed an algorithm to process the NIR images. Firstly, the vehicle windshield region was extracted based on optimal edge detections and Hough transform, and 60 line detector masks and integral projection. Then, the occupants’ faces in the region were segmented through AdaBoost-based face detection. Experimental results show that the method has the potential possibility to automatically detect vehicle occupants.

Keywords: Occupant Detection, NIR Imaging, Windshield Reflection, Windshield Extraction, Face Detection

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