1. Mean Shift Theory and Applications
Yaron Ukrainitz & Bernard Sarel

2. Agenda Mean Shift Theory What is Mean Shift ?
Density Estimation Methods
Deriving the Mean Shift
Mean shift properties
Applications
Clustering
Discontinuity Preserving Smoothing
Object Contour Detection
Segmentation
Object Tracking

3. Mean Shift Theory

4. Intuitive Description
Region of
interest
Center of
mass
Mean Shift
vector
Objective : Find the densest region
Distribution of identical billiard balls

5. Intuitive Description
Region of
interest
Center of
mass
Mean Shift
vector
Objective : Find the densest region
Distribution of identical billiard balls

6. Intuitive Description
Region of
interest
Center of
mass
Mean Shift
vector
Objective : Find the densest region
Distribution of identical billiard balls

7. Intuitive Description
Region of
interest
Center of
mass
Mean Shift
vector
Objective : Find the densest region
Distribution of identical billiard balls

8. Intuitive Description
Region of
interest
Center of
mass
Mean Shift
vector
Objective : Find the densest region
Distribution of identical billiard balls

9. Intuitive Description
Region of
interest
Center of
mass
Mean Shift
vector
Objective : Find the densest region
Distribution of identical billiard balls

10. Intuitive Description
Region of
interest
Center of
mass
Objective : Find the densest region
Distribution of identical billiard balls

11. Density GRADIENT Estimation
What is Mean Shift ?
A tool for:
Finding modes in a set of data samples, manifesting an
underlying probability density function (PDF) in RN
PDF in feature space
Color space
Scale space
Actually any feature space you can conceive …
Non-parametric
Density Estimation
Data
Discrete PDF Representation
Non-parametric
Density GRADIENT Estimation
(Mean Shift)
PDF Analysis

12. Non-Parametric Density Estimation
Assumption : The data points are sampled from an underlying PDF
Data point density
implies PDF value !
Assumed Underlying PDF
Real Data Samples

13. Non-Parametric Density Estimation
Assumed Underlying PDF
Real Data Samples

14. Non-Parametric Density Estimation?
Assumed Underlying PDF
Real Data Samples

15. Parametric Density Estimation
Assumption : The data points are sampled from an underlying PDF
Estimate
Assumed Underlying PDF
Real Data Samples

16. Kernel Density Estimation Parzen Windows - General Framework
A function of some finite number of data points
x1…xn
Data
Kernel Properties:
Normalized
Symmetric
Exponential weight decay
???

17. Kernel Density Estimation Parzen Windows - Function Forms
A function of some finite number of data points
x1…xn
Data
In practice one uses the forms: or
Same function on each dimension
Function of vector length only

18. Kernel Density Estimation Various Kernels
A function of some finite number of data points
x1…xn
Data
Examples:
Epanechnikov Kernel
Uniform Kernel
Normal Kernel

19. Kernel Density Estimation
Gradient
Give up estimating the PDF !
Estimate ONLY the gradient
Using the
Kernel form:
We get :
Size of window

20. Kernel Density Estimation
Computing The Mean Shift
Gradient

21. Computing The Mean Shift
Yet another Kernel
density estimation !
Simple Mean Shift procedure:
Compute mean shift vector
Translate the Kernel window by m(x)

22. Mean Shift Mode Detection
What happens if we
reach a saddle point ?
Perturb the mode position
and check if we return back
Updated Mean Shift Procedure:
Find all modes using the Simple Mean Shift Procedure
Prune modes by perturbing them (find saddle points and plateaus)
Prune nearby – take highest mode in the window

23. Mean Shift Properties
Automatic convergence speed – the mean shift vector size depends on the gradient itself.
Near maxima, the steps are small and refined
Convergence is guaranteed for infinitesimal steps only  infinitely convergent, (therefore set a lower bound)
For Uniform Kernel ( ), convergence is achieved in a finite number of steps
Normal Kernel ( ) exhibits a smooth trajectory, but is slower than Uniform Kernel ( ).
Adaptive
Gradient
Ascent

24. Real Modality Analysis
Tessellate the space
with windows
Run the procedure in parallel

25. Real Modality Analysis
The blue data points were traversed by the windows towards the mode

26. Real Modality Analysis An example
Window tracks signify the steepest ascent directions

27. Adaptive Mean Shift

28. Mean Shift Strengths & Weaknesses
Application independent tool
Suitable for real data analysis
Does not assume any prior shape (e.g. elliptical) on data clusters
Can handle arbitrary feature spaces
Only ONE parameter to choose
h (window size) has a physical meaning, unlike K-Means
Weaknesses :
The window size (bandwidth selection) is not trivial
Inappropriate window size can cause modes to be merged, or generate additional “shallow” modes  Use adaptive window size

29. Mean Shift Applications

30. Clustering Cluster : All data points in the attraction basin of a mode
Attraction basin : the region for which all trajectories lead to the same mode
Mean Shift : A robust Approach Toward Feature Space Analysis, by Comaniciu, Meer

31. Clustering Synthetic Examples
Simple Modal Structures
Complex Modal Structures

32. Clustering Real Example
Feature space:
L*u*v representation
Initial window
centers
Modes found
Modes after
pruning
Final clusters

33. Clustering Real Example
L*u*v space representation

34. Clustering Real Example
2D (L*u) space representation
Final clusters
Not all trajectories
in the attraction basin
reach the same mode

35. Discontinuity Preserving Smoothing
Feature space : Joint domain = spatial coordinates + color space
Meaning : treat the image as data points in the spatial and gray level domain
Image Data
(slice)
Mean Shift
vectors
Smoothing
result
Mean Shift : A robust Approach Toward Feature Space Analysis, by Comaniciu, Meer

36. Discontinuity Preserving Smoothingx y z
The image gray levels…
… can be viewed as data points
in the x, y, z space (joined spatial
And color space)

37. Discontinuity Preserving Smoothing
Flat regions induce the modes ! y z

38. Discontinuity Preserving Smoothing
The effect of
window size
in spatial and
range spaces

39. Discontinuity Preserving Smoothing Example

40. Discontinuity Preserving Smoothing Example

41. Object Contour Detection Ray Propagation
Accurately segment various objects (rounded in nature) in medical images
Vessel Detection by Mean Shift Based Ray Propagation, by Tek, Comaniciu, Williams

42. Object Contour Detection Ray Propagation
Use displacement data to guide ray propagation
Discontinuity preserving smoothing
Displacement
vectors
Vessel Detection by Mean Shift Based Ray Propagation, by Tek, Comaniciu, Williams

43. Object Contour Detection Ray Propagation
Speed
function
Normal to
the contour
Curvature

44. Object Contour Detection
Gray levels along
red line
Gray levels after
smoothing
Original image
Displacement vectors
Displacement vectors’
derivative

45. Object Contour Detection Example

46. Object Contour Detection Example
Importance of smoothing by curvature

47. Segmentation Segment = Cluster, or Cluster of Clusters Algorithm:
Run Filtering (discontinuity preserving smoothing)
Cluster the clusters which are closer than window size
Image Data
(slice)
Mean Shift
vectors
Smoothing
result
Segmentation
result
Mean Shift : A robust Approach Toward Feature Space Analysis, by Comaniciu, Meer

48. Segmentation Example
…when feature space is only
gray levels…

49. Segmentation Example

50. Segmentation Example

51. Segmentation Example

52. Segmentation Example

53. Segmentation Example

54. Segmentation Example

55. Non-Rigid Object Tracking… …

56. Non-Rigid Object Tracking
Real-Time
Object-Based Video Compression
Surveillance
Driver Assistance

57. Mean-Shift Object Tracking General Framework: Target Representation
Choose a reference model in the current frame
Choose a feature space
Represent the model in the chosen feature space
Current frame …

58. Mean-Shift Object Tracking General Framework: Target Localization
Start from the position of the model in the current frame
Search in the model’s neighborhood in next frame
Find best candidate by maximizing a similarity func.
Repeat the same process in the next pair of frames
Current frame …
Model
Candidate

59. Mean-Shift Object Tracking Target Representation
Choose a reference target model
Represent the model by its PDF in the feature space
Quantized Color Space
Choose a feature space
Kernel Based Object Tracking, by Comaniniu, Ramesh, Meer

60. Mean-Shift Object Tracking PDF Representation
Target Model
(centered at 0)
Target Candidate
(centered at y)
Similarity Function:

61. Mean-Shift Object Tracking Smoothness of Similarity Function
Problem:
Target is represented by color info only
Spatial info is lost
Large similarity variations for adjacent locations
f is not smooth
Gradient-based optimizations are not robust
Solution:
Mask the target with an isotropic kernel in the spatial domain
f(y) becomes smooth in y

62. Mean-Shift Object Tracking Finding the PDF of the target model
model y
candidate
Target pixel locations
A differentiable, isotropic, convex, monotonically decreasing kernel
Peripheral pixels are affected by occlusion and background interference
The color bin index (1..m) of pixel x
Probability of feature u in model
Probability of feature u in candidate
Normalization factor
Pixel weight
Normalization factor
Pixel weight

63. Mean-Shift Object Tracking Similarity Function
Target model:
Target candidate:
Similarity function: 1
The Bhattacharyya Coefficient

64. Mean-Shift Object Tracking Target Localization Algorithm
Start from the position of the model in the current frame
Search in the model’s neighborhood in next frame
Find best candidate by maximizing a similarity func.

65. Mean-Shift Object Tracking Approximating the Similarity Function
Model location:
Candidate location:
Linear approx.
(around y0)
Independent of y
Density estimate! (as a function of y)

66. Mean-Shift Object Tracking Maximizing the Similarity Function
The mode of
= sought maximum
Important Assumption:
One mode in the searched neighborhood
The target representation provides sufficient discrimination

67. Mean-Shift Object Tracking Applying Mean-Shift
The mode of
= sought maximum
Original Mean-Shift:
Find mode of
using
Extended Mean-Shift:
Find mode of
using

68. Mean-Shift Object Tracking About Kernels and Profiles
A special class of radially symmetric kernels:
The profile of kernel K
Extended Mean-Shift:
Find mode of
using

69. Mean-Shift Object Tracking Choosing the Kernel
A special class of radially symmetric kernels:
Epanechnikov kernel:
Uniform kernel:
Extended Mean-Shift:

70. Mean-Shift Object Tracking Adaptive Scale
Problem:
The scale of the target changes in time
The scale (h) of the kernel must be adapted
Solution:
Run localization 3 times with different h
Choose h that achieves maximum similarity

71. Mean-Shift Object Tracking Results
Feature space: 161616 quantized RGB
Target: manually selected on 1st frame
Average mean-shift iterations: 4

72. Mean-Shift Object Tracking Results
Partial occlusion
Distraction
Motion blur

73. Mean-Shift Object Tracking Results

74. Mean-Shift Object Tracking Results
Feature space: 128128 quantized RG

75. Mean-Shift Object Tracking The Scale Selection Problem
Kernel too big
Poor localization
h mustn’t get too big or too small!
Kernel too small
Problem:
In uniformly colored regions, similarity is invariant to h
Smaller h may achieve better similarity
Nothing keeps h from shrinking too small!

76. Tracking Through Scale Space Motivation
Spatial localization for several scales
Simultaneous localization in space and scale
Previous method
This method
Mean-shift Blob Tracking through Scale Space, by R. Collins

77. Lindeberg’s Theory Selecting the best scale for describing image featuresx y σ
Scale-space representation
Differential operator applied
50 strongest responses

78. Lindeberg’s Theory The Laplacian operator for selecting blob-like features
2D LOG filter with scale σ
Laplacian of Gaussian (LOG)
Scale-space representation x y σ
3D scale-space representation
Best features are at (x,σ) that maximize L

79. Lindeberg’s Theory Multi-Scale Feature Selection Process
250 strongest responses (Large circle = large scale)
Maximize
3D scale-space function
Convolve
Original Image

80. Tracking Through Scale Space Approximating LOG using DOG
2D LOG filter with scale σ
2D DOG filter with scale σ
2D Gaussian with μ=0 and scale σ
2D Gaussian with μ=0 and scale 1.6σ
Why DOG?
Gaussian pyramids are created faster
Gaussian can be used as a mean-shift kernel
DOG filters at multiple scales
3D spatial kernel
Scale-space filter bank

81. Tracking Through Scale Space Using Lindeberg’s Theory
Weight image
3D spatial kernel (DOG)
Centered at current location and scale
1D scale kernel (Epanechnikov)
3D scale-space representation
Modes are blobs in the scale-space neighborhood
Model:
Candidate:
Color bin: at
Pixel weight:
Recall:
Need a mean-shift procedure that finds local modes in E(x,σ)
The likelihood that each candidate pixel belongs to the target

82. Tracking Through Scale Space Example
Image of 3 blobs
A slice through the 3D scale-space representation

83. Tracking Through Scale Space Applying Mean-Shift
Use interleaved spatial/scale mean-shift
Spatial stage:
Scale stage:
Fix σ and look for the best x
Fix x and look for the best σ x σ x0 σ0
xopt
σopt
Iterate stages until convergence of x and σ

84. Tracking Through Scale Space Results
Fixed-scale
± 10% scale adaptation
Tracking through scale space

85. Thank
You