Hand gesture detection and tracking methods based on background subtraction

Abstract

This paper combines the background subtraction and frame difference methods to detect a moving-hand area. Currently, hand-gesture recognition contains the following parts: hand area detection, hand tracking, and recognition. In this paper, we describe the moving-hand area detection and tracking parts of our work. First, we constructed a background image model that did not contain a moving hand. Then, using a background updating algorithm to obtain the authentic background image, we obtained the moving-hand area by subtracting the current image frame from the background image frame. We utilized a novel dynamic threshold method to enhance detection. We used the Microsoft Kinect to track the hand region because Kinect can capture information about the human body and the position of various body parts. The experiments demonstrated that our methods can be used to detect a moving region from an original image. © 2014 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.