Water detection through spatio-temporal invariant descriptors

- We introduce a video pre-processing step to remove background reflections and inherent water colours.
- We introduce a hybrid spatial and temporal descriptor for local water classification.
- We introduce a new dataset, the Video Water Database, for experimental evaluation and to encourage research into water detection.
- We show experimentally that our water detection method improves over methods from dynamic texture and material recognition.

In this work, we aim to segment and detect water in videos. Water detection is beneficial for appllications such as video search, outdoor surveillance, and systems such as unmanned ground vehicles and unmanned aerial vehicles. The specific problem, however, is less discussed compared to general texture recognition. Here, we analyze several motion properties of water. First, we describe a video pre-processing step, to increase invariance against water reflections and water colours. Second, we investigate the temporal and spatial properties of water and derive corresponding local descriptors. The descriptors are used to locally classify the presence of water and a binary water detection mask is generated through spatio-temporal Markov Random Field regularization of the local classifications. Third, we introduce the Video Water Database, containing several hours of water and non-water videos, to validate our algorithm. Experimental evaluation on the Video Water Database and the DynTex database indicates the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, outperforming multiple algorithms for dynamic texture recognition and material recognition.