Fire detection using statistical color model in video sequences

In this paper, we propose a real-time fire-detector that combines foreground object information with color pixel statistics of fire. Simple adaptive background model of the scene is generated by using three Gaussian distributions, where each distribution corresponds to the pixel statistics in the respective color channel. The foreground information is extracted by using adaptive background subtraction algorithm, and then verified by the statistical fire color model to determine whether the detected foreground object is a fire candidate or not. A generic fire color model is constructed by statistical analysis of the sample images containing fire pixels. The first contribution of the paper is the application of real-time adaptive background subtraction method that aids the segmentation of the fire candidate pixels from the background. The second contribution is the use of a generic statistical model for refined fire-pixel classification. The two processes are combined to form the fire detection system and applied for the detection of fire in the consecutive frames of video sequences. The frame-processing rate of the detector is about 40 fps with image size of 176 × 144 pixels, and the algorithm's correct detection rate is 98.89%. © 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.