UNIFIED SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR ANIMAL BEHAVIOR CHARACTERIZATION WITH TRAINING CAPABILITIES
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Abstract
In general, the present invention is directed to systems and methods for finding the position and shape of an object using video. The invention includes a system with a video camera coupled to a computer in which the computer is configured to automatically provide object segmentation and identification, object motion tracking (for moving objects), object position classification, and behavior identification. In a preferred embodiment, the present invention may use background subtraction for object identification and tracking, probabilistic approach with expectation-maximization for tracking the motion detection and object classification, and decision tree classification for behavior identification. Thus, the present invention is capable of automatically monitoring a video image to identify, track and classify the actions of various objects and the object'"'"'s movements within the image. The image may be provided in real time or from storage. The invention is particularly useful for monitoring and classifying animal behavior for testing drugs and genetic mutations, but may be used in any of a number of other surveillance applications.
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Citations
79 Claims
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1-42. -42. (canceled)
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43. A user configurable video-based animal behavior analysis system, comprising a computer configured to determine features of an animal from video images and to characterize activity of said animal as one of a set of behaviors based on an analysis of changes in said features over time;
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wherein the set of behaviors comprises at least one predetermined standard behavior and wherein one or more user-defined behaviors can be added to the set of behaviors. - View Dependent Claims (44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53)
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54. A method of characterizing activity of an animal using computer processing of video images, comprising:
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detecting an animal in said video images; tracking activity of said animal over a plurality of said video images; classifying the activity of said animal as one of a set of classifiers based on comparing the activity over time to sets of rules of said set of classifiers; wherein the set of classifiers comprise at least one standard classifier and wherein one or more user-defined classifiers can be added to the set of classifiers. - View Dependent Claims (55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70)
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71. A method of characterizing activity of an animal using computer processing of video images, comprising
detecting an animal in said video images; -
tracking activity of said animal over a plurality of video images; characterizing the activity based on models or rules, wherein the models or the rules comprise at least one standard model or standard rule; wherein one or more user-defined models or user-defined rules can be added to the models or rules. - View Dependent Claims (72, 73, 74)
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- 75. A trainable video-based animal behavior analysis system comprising a computer configured to track an animal over time using video images, to extract features of the animal, and to use the extracted features for training the system and classification of the organism from one frame to another frame.
- 78. A trainable animal characterization system comprising a computer having an animal identification module for identifying an animal in an image, an animal tracking module for tracking the animal from one image to another, and an animal classification module for classifying the animal based upon classifiers stored in a memory of the system, wherein the classification module is configured to extract one or more features of the animal for training the classification module to identify new classifiers that are not stored in the memory, the classification module further configured to store in memory the new classifiers for use in subsequent animal characterizations.
Specification