Topology Based Object Tracking

Abstract

A model for tracking objects whose topological properties change over time is proposed. Such changes include the splitting of an object into multiple objects or the merging of multiple objects into a single object. The proposed model employs a novel formulation of the tracking problem in terms of homology theory whereby 0-dimensional homology classes, which correspond to connected components, are tracked. A generalisation of this model for tracking spatially close objects lying in an ambient metric space is also proposed. This generalisation is particularly suitable for tracking spatial-temporal phenomena such as rain clouds. The utility of the proposed model is demonstrated with respect to tracking communities in a social network and tracking rain clouds in radar imagery.