Measuring traffic movements at junctions using image processing techniques

Image processing techniques are now considered as flexible techniques to measure and analyze various traffic parameters. Compared to the simple traffic parameters such as vehicle count and speed measurement, less attention has been paid to measure complex traffic parameters such as the Traffic Movements at Junctions (TMJ). The previous reported research on measuring traffic movements at junctions is based on full frame processing, which requires more computing power, thus is not suitable for low-cost computer systems. The method described in this paper is based on processing the key regions and detecting vehicles by using the edge detection techniques. In this approach, the architecture of the junctions is identified and the windows are placed at the key regions. A low-cost and effective edge detection technique is used to detect the vehicles and to measure the TMT parameters. The proposed algorithms have been implemented on a low-cost microcomputer system and the TMJ parameters together with other traffic parameters, such as vehicle count, are measured in real-time. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.