JP2002252848A - Image monitor - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an image monitor which is superior in process efficiency. SOLUTION: The image monitor comprises a means (1) for taking images of a monitored area, a means (2) of applying a prescribed process to the images taken by the means (1), a means 3 of receiving the images processed by the processing means (2) as specified, obtaining the image difference between two successive frames, and if the sum of the image differences of some images is not greater than a prescribed value, removing other images than any of them, with leaving the one image only, and a means (3) for converting only the image left by the removing means (3) to an image which conforms with the http protocol and transmitting it.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an image monitoring apparatus for monitoring an intruder in a store, an ATM installation facility, an office or the like.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In the field of monitoring intruders in stores, ATM installation facilities and offices, methods such as image transmission, monitoring by monitoring image transmission, VTR recording of monitoring images, monitoring by image processing recognition, and a combination thereof are used. Techniques have been used. Hereinafter, these techniques will be described. Surveillance by surveillance image transmission requires analog I
A TV camera is installed, an analog image is generally transmitted to a monitoring center located at a remote place, and a monitoring person arranged at the center constantly monitors the monitoring image.

[0003] In this case, images from a plurality of cameras are generally transmitted, and a monitor monitors the display of the images consciously or at regular intervals. Further, as a trigger for switching screens, there is a method that uses an intruder detection signal from an intrusion sensor such as an infrared ray or an ultrasonic wave installed in a monitoring environment. In addition, there is an image which is not converted to an analog image but is converted into compressed data by Jpeg or Mpeg and then transmitted.

[0004] VTR recording of surveillance images involves installing an analog ITV camera in a surveillance environment and recording images at regular intervals in a VTR device installed in a remote place or in a place invisible from the surveillance environment. The monitoring based on the image processing recognition is to perform notification and start the VTR by detecting a change in an image in the monitoring environment or a person candidate area from the image.

[0005]

The above prior arts have the following problems. First, the problem with monitoring by monitoring image transmission is that although the processing mechanism is simple, auxiliary equipment such as laying a dedicated transmission line and installing a booster to guarantee signal deterioration due to transmission is required to perform analog image transmission. Required. Therefore, the cost for these facilities is enormous, and it is necessary to always have a supervisor at the center.

On the other hand, in a system for transmitting compressed data of an image, a general digital line can be used instead of an analog dedicated line because of a smaller amount of data and no signal deterioration due to transmission as compared with the above. Since a large amount of information other than the intrusion event is also transmitted, the problem of the constant deployment of the observer is not solved.

[0007] As for the problem in the VTR recording of the surveillance image, this system basically records an image of an intruder separately from an emergency call, and is used later for estimating a situation or identifying an intruder. However, recording at regular intervals may not actually record an important video as an intrusion event.

The problem with monitoring by image processing is that if the detection rate of intruders is appropriate, this system requires transmission and storage processing only at the time of intrusion, and thus costs for data transmission and storage. Can be reduced as a whole. In addition, only when an event occurs, the monitoring staff checks the transmitted and stored images, thereby reducing the necessity of constantly deploying.

However, after detecting an event, the nature of the transmitted or stored image is often not good for the observer to confirm. This is because, for example, there is no characteristic portion such as a face in the person area in the monitoring video, the image is too small, or the image quality is deteriorated due to the influence of compression. An object of the present invention is to provide an image monitoring device having excellent processing efficiency.

[0010]

According to the present invention, there is provided an image monitoring apparatus, comprising: an imaging unit that captures an image of a monitoring area; a processing unit that performs a predetermined process on an image captured by the imaging unit; An image processing unit that receives an image on which predetermined processing has been performed, obtains an image difference amount between two consecutive frames, and removes another image while leaving only one of the images if the sum is equal to or less than a predetermined value. And a transmission unit for converting only the image left by the removal unit into the http protocol and transmitting the converted image.

[0011]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below in detail with reference to the drawings. In the following description, an apparatus that monitors an intruder in a certain monitoring area using the present system will be described.

First, an overview of the overall configuration and processing of this embodiment will be described. FIG. 1 shows the overall configuration of a person monitoring system (image monitoring device) according to the present invention. This system is
The person extracting means 1, the intermediate server means 2, and the server means 3; the person extracting means 1 extracts a person candidate area from the input moving image; the intermediate server means 2 selects an image which is optimally visible; The server means 3 generates a key for image search or http (hyperte
xt transfer protocol). And each means 1, 2, 3
Are connected by wired or wireless digital communication.

Therefore, for the person candidate area in the input image detected by one or a plurality of person extracting means 1, the person extracting means 1 or the intermediate server means 2 checks the characteristics of the person and optimizes the appearance of the frame. And an input of a camera (this corresponds to the person extracting means 1) is selected, and the server means 3 temporarily stores the optimal person image sequence obtained from the intermediate server means 2, and thereafter stores those images. The transmission of the sequence is performed. At this time, for example, with respect to the detected person sequence, an image search key such as a moving direction, a color, a way of movement, and a similarity to the reference person image is created,
A process for transmitting only a desired image is also performed according to a request from the user.

As described above, the person extracting means 1 and the intermediate server 2,
In accordance with the state of the transmission path between each of the intermediate server means 2 and the server means 3 and the number of intrusion events of the target person, the range of the processing for each is appropriately changed. For example, the person extracting means 1 extracts and confirms a person candidate area. However, when the number of events per unit time is large, the person candidate confirming process is performed only in a relatively rough manner, and a face or the like described later is used. Items having a high processing cost, such as confirmation by a characteristic portion, are assigned to the intermediate server means 2.

The configuration and processing of the person extracting means 1, intermediate server means 2, and server means 3 will be described below. FIG. 2 is a diagram showing the configuration of the person extracting means 1. The digital image data input every several frames by the image input means 4 comprising a color or monochrome television camera and an A / D converter is once stored in the person detection image storage means 5, and as described later, Person candidate area extraction means 6
The approximate area of the intruding person is detected by using the characteristic area pattern (for example, face,
The presence / absence of hands, feet, etc.) is confirmed by the person area confirmation means 7, and the person candidate area image and the confirmation result are transmitted by the person candidate communication means 8 to Ethernet or IEEE13.
The data is transmitted to the intermediate server 94 on a protocol 94 such as Tcp / IP. If the input image was color above,
Only the luminance component is extracted and stored in the person detection image storage unit 5.

In the person extracting means 1, the number of extractions of the above-mentioned target person area within a certain time, that is, the detection frequency, is measured by the detection frequency measuring means 9 inside the person extracting means 1, and this is set in advance. If the value is equal to or larger than the threshold value, it is determined that the processing of the present means should not take a long time, and the processing of the person area checking means 7 which generally requires a processing cost is not performed. I do.

In the following, as a characteristic feature of the person extracting means 1, a person candidate area extracting means 6, a person area confirming means 7, and a person candidate communicating means 8 will be described. As the processing of the person candidate area extracting means 6, any of the following methods can be used.

For example, a difference is made for each pixel for successive sampling images (frames), a region binarized by a certain threshold value is extracted, and a region spatially connected in the sense of four connections or eight connections is obtained. This is a method for detecting a candidate whose area or circumscribed rectangle size is appropriate as a person candidate. The flow of this processing is shown in the flowchart of FIG. The threshold value for binarization at this time can use a method of analyzing the frequency distribution for each luminance of the difference image and determining the value as the value that maximizes the variance ratio (Otsu, automatic determination based on discrimination and least square criterion). Threshold Selection Method, IEICE, Vol.
-D, No. 4, pp. 349-356, 1980). Here, before performing the analysis of the connected region, the expansion and contraction processing may be performed several times on the extraction region to reduce the influence of over-extraction or “blurring” due to noise. In this case, the primary reliability C1 of the extraction area is calculated as follows, for example.

C1 = (Vf, Vft) / (| Vf || Vft |) (1) where V = (W, H, S) Vt = ((Twu + Twl) / 2, (Thu + Thl) / 2, (Tsu + Tsl) / 2) (2) where W and H are the vertical and horizontal sizes of the circumscribed rectangle of the extraction area, and S is the area of the extraction area. Also Tw
u and Twl are the vertical sizes of the circumscribed rectangle, Thu and Thl are the horizontal sizes of the circumscribed rectangle, and Tsu and Tsl are threshold values indicating the upper and lower limits of the extraction area, respectively, and satisfy 0 ≦ Cf ≦ 1.

The reliability calculation vectors V and Vt may be added to the circularity R as follows. V = (W, H, S, R), Vt = ((Twu + Twl) / 2, (Thu + Thl) / 2, (Tsu + Tsl) / 2), Tr ... (2 ') R = (perimeter of extraction region) / S, where Tr is the standard value of R as a person.

As another method, a method based on posterior probability conversion may be used (Nakai, Moving object detection method using posterior probability, Jikken Kenho, 94-CV-90, pp. 1-8, 19).
94).

FIG. 4 is a flowchart showing the flow of the process of the method using the posterior probability conversion. The event θ0 is a background and the event θ1 is an intruder. Prior probabilities of θ0 and θ1 before observing the luminance of a pixel in a certain partial image are w0 and w1 respectively.
(Where w0 + w1 = 1), the posterior probability w1 ′
Is the conditional probability of the pixel luminance I under the event θk is P
When (I | θk), from Bayes' theorem, w1 ′ = {w1p (I | θ1)} / {p (I | θ0) (1-w1) + p (I | θ1) w1} (3) Those that w1 'is larger than a certain threshold value T are extracted as pixels belonging to the intruder. Here, from the frequency distribution h (x, y, I) of the image of only the background obtained in advance, Since p (I | θ1) generally has no data sample, it is estimated that p (I | θ0) = 1 / (Imax−Imin) (5). In addition, the above applies to w1 every time the input image is updated.
= W1 ', and the initial value of w1 may be 1.0 / 2.0.

In order to extract a person candidate area, for each pixel i in the input image, w′i in equation (2) is obtained and w ′
It is sufficient to select a pixel having an area or a circumscribed rectangle size that is appropriate as a person, from among pixels that satisfy i> T and are connected in the sense of 8-connection or 4-connection. According to this method, there is an advantage that the fluctuation can be statistically absorbed even if the background area constantly fluctuates.

In the above, the posterior probabilities for non-background (that is, the object) are obtained for each pixel. However, before extraction (binarization) by comparison with a threshold value, the probability distribution is changed to 4 neighborhoods or 8 neighborhoods. May be smoothed. This is because the continuity of the random field in the vicinity of the object is assumed, and overextraction and blur due to noise are reduced. In order to further remove noise, the expansion / contraction process may be repeated several times after the binarization.

Also in this case, the reliability C1 of the extraction area is calculated based on the equation (1).
Here, Vt is calculated as follows, for example. V = (W, H, S, P) Vt = ((Twu + Twl) / 2, (Thu + Thl) / 2, (Tsu + Tsl) / 2, Tp) (2 ″) = (W, H, S, R, P) Vt = ((Twu + Twl) / 2, (Thu + Thl) / 2, (Tsu + Tsl) / 2), Tr, Tp) (2 ″ ′) where P is an extraction rectangle Is the normalized sum of posterior probabilities in
It is determined as follows.

[0026] Where Tp is a standard value of the above-mentioned P value for a person,
Rect indicates an extracted circumscribed rectangular area.

Next, the person area checking means 7 in the person extracting means 1 shown in FIG. 2 will be described. The person area confirmation unit 7 inquires of the detection frequency measurement unit 9 whether the detection frequency described above exceeds the set threshold. If the detection frequency is less than or equal to the threshold Th, a plurality of images of various human body parts are collected, and pattern matching using a dictionary in which the information is statistically compressed is applied as described above. Pixels inside the person candidate area extracted in
Detects whether a characteristic part exists. This is shown in FIG.

As such a method, there is a method in which a plurality of characteristic part images normalized to a certain fixed size are divided into a plurality of classes based on a certain reference, and a canonical determination is performed based on the divided classes. FIG. 6 is a flowchart showing the flow of the process according to this method. First, the following steps are taken.

(I) Calculation of intra-class variance B and inter-class variance W for a plurality of classes of normalized images (ii) (B + βSw) Φ = {(1−β) W + βI {Φ}
Where 0 <β <1, Φ: an eigenvector matrix having an eigenvector Φi as a column vector, Λ: an eigenvalue matrix having an eigenvalue λi as a diagonal element.

(Iii) Each vector in the cluster i is projected onto the above-mentioned Φ, and the average Mi and Φ and possibly the variance-covariance Vi are used as a dictionary. (Vi) At the time of matching, the screen is divided into small areas j, and the Euclidean distance and Mahalanobis distance between each vector i and the vector Vj obtained by projecting the image vector of each small area onto the above Φ are obtained.

When other images similar to the non-object class are used as the non-object class at the time of class creation as described above, similar regions other than the desired region are not extracted, and only the desired region is easily extracted. For example, a front-facing face of a plurality of persons is used as the desired target feature image, and a face similar pattern of the background is used as the non-target object class.

Here, the object class is created from images of the face area of a plurality of persons, and these are divided into several types of different classes according to the direction of the face. As the non-object class, a face similar pattern in the background is manually picked up in advance and used.

Then, in the matching result of step (vi), the distance from the smallest to the Nth, and if the sum of the distances of the objects belonging to the object class is less than or equal to a predetermined value Td, it is assumed that the person area is confirmed. . In this case, the secondary reliability C2 is calculated as follows, for example.

[0034] After the above processing is completed, the above-described matching is performed outside the extracted person candidate area as described for the person candidate area extracting means 6, and the distance is reduced to M
Save up to the first item as data of the non-object class.

Next, the person candidate communication means 8 in the person extraction means 1 shown in FIG. 2 will be described. As described above, when the detection frequency measuring means 9 compares the detection result of the person candidate with the fixed interval Th to the intermediate server and transmits the result to the intermediate server, the intermediate server sends the result as follows in accordance with the result. 1, the processing sharing instruction message is sent, and the processing by the person extracting means 1 follows the message.

(I) When the detection frequency ≧ Th The processing by the person extracting means 1 is only the processing by the above-mentioned person candidate area extracting means 6. (Ii) When detection frequency <Th The processing in the person extracting means 1 is the processing of the person candidate area extracting means 6 and the person area confirming means 7.

In the case of (i), the output result of the person candidate communication means 8 includes, for example, the coordinates of the extraction area (circumscribed rectangle) extracted by the person candidate area extraction means 6, the extraction time, and the extraction time. The reliability of the region is C1. In the case of (ii), the output result of the person candidate communication means 8 includes, for example, the extracted region (i. May be calculated and transmitted as follows.

C = min (C1, C2) (8) In the case of (ii), the following information is extracted from the result of step (vi) and transmitted. This is information for selecting the camera of the optimal scene. Of the above matching result areas in the person candidate area, matching distances from the smallest distance to the Nth one, and the dictionary category name matched with each of them, The above-mentioned matching is performed at the position in each screen and outside the person candidate area, and the matching distance as the data of the non-object class from the smallest to the Mth one, and the dictionary matched with each of them The category name and the position within each screen are also transmitted.

In addition, in accordance with the transmitted target extraction result, a desired image transmission operation described later is performed in accordance with the image transmission message sent from the intermediate server means 2. Next, the intermediate server means 2 of FIG. 1 will be described.
FIG. 7 is a diagram showing the configuration of the intermediate server means 2. The intermediate server means 2 includes a person extraction communication means 10, a person extraction assisting means 11, an optimal image pickup selection means 12, and a server communication means 13.
And extracted person image storage means 14. Below,
The respective operations will be described.

The person extraction communication means 10 is responsible for the load sharing of the person extraction function according to the detection frequency of each person extraction means 1 and also for the recognition certainty from the person extraction means 1 and the communication load of the intermediate server means 2. Controls the transmission of extracted images,
As a result, a person extraction image sent from the person extraction means 1 is received. The received person extraction image is stored in the extraction person image storage means 14 together with the position information on the screen, the reliability, and the extraction time.

This communication process is executed in the following procedure, for example. FIG. 8 is a flowchart showing the flow of the process performed by the person extraction communication unit 10. (I) Acquisition of the internal state of the person extracting means and instruction of the person extracting method As the internal state from each person extracting means 1, it is acquired whether or not the number Ns of temporarily stored images and the detection frequency H exceed a threshold Th, and In accordance with the detection frequency described for the communication means 8, it is instructed whether the processing in the person extraction means 1 is to be performed only by the person candidate area extraction means 6 or the person area confirmation means 7 is also performed. By doing so, it is necessary to confirm a person candidate, but it is possible to prevent missing detection even in a place where a person frequently enters the monitoring area. In an environment where confirmation of a person candidate is not required, the person candidate region extracting means 6 is always used.
It is also possible to perform only the processing.

In the case where the processing of the person area confirmation means 7 is also performed inside the intermediate server means 2 as described above, as described in the above-described person area confirmation means 7, the processing is performed outside the stored person candidate area. The surrounding coordinates of the matching result (non-object class data) are also transmitted.

(Ii) Image transmission control according to the recognition certainty factor and the communication load Next, as shown by the person candidate communication means 8 to the extraction area, the extraction time, and the reliability Ckl of the extraction area as shown by the person candidate communication means 8 described above.
Is sent, and the detection frequency H in each person extracting means 1 is transmitted.
From k and the communication traffic, control of image transmission, that is, a transmission image region Rk is obtained in accordance with the following method, for example. Here, k is a person extraction means number, and l is an extraction area number in one person extraction means, and 0 ≦ l ≦ L.

[0044] However, the extraction area is Rkl, and when Tkl> the whole screen, Tkl
= The entire screen. U indicates the sum of the sets.

If SH ≧ Tk3 Rk = temporarily save without transmitting the current extracted image,... (9 ″ ′) where SH is an amount representing communication traffic, for example, a sum of detection frequencies in all the person extracting means. The following may be used. Ckl is the reliability of each extraction area, Hk is the detection frequency of each person extraction unit, and K is the number of accesses of each person extraction unit. Further, when transmitting the image of the non-target class in the above (i), the image is treated in the same manner as the above-mentioned temporarily stored image of the detection result.

Next, the person extraction assisting means 11 shown in FIG. 7 will be described. FIG. 9 is a flowchart showing the flow of the process of the person extraction assisting means 11. The person extraction assisting means 11
In the description of the person candidate communication means 8 in FIG. 2 described above, when (i) detection frequency ≧ Th, exactly the same processing as that performed by the person area confirmation means 7 is performed. Further, when the sum of the number of dictionary update data for the non-target class in the person confirmation after the last dictionary update can be collected from the transmission image by a certain value (Ns × α) or more, the dictionary for person confirmation according to the present invention is re-established. Perform the configuration.

Here, Ns is the conventional number of non-target samples,
It is a constant between α0 and 1, and as the reconstruction sample, Ns × (1−α) is randomly selected from the conventional samples in addition to the above-mentioned new sample Ns × α, and the (2) (B) A new dictionary is created by the processes (i) to (iii) of the person area checking means 7.

Next, the optimum image pickup selecting means 12 shown in FIG. 7 will be described. FIG. 10 shows the optimum image pickup selecting means 12 according to the invention
3 is a flowchart showing the flow of the processing of FIG. As described in (ii) in the description of the person candidate communication means 8 in FIG. 2, the matching result in the person candidate area as the matching result in step (vi) of the person area confirmation means 7 having a smaller distance among the candidate result areas The matching distances from the first to the Nth, the dictionary category name that matches each of them, and the position in each screen are transmitted to the optimal imaging selection means 12.

Here, as the definition of the optimality, it is assumed that the distribution of positions among the above-mentioned matching results is unified, and the distance from a matching dictionary category close to the front is small. For example, the following is used as the feature amount F (optimum person imaging feature amount) expressing this.

[0050] Here, σ is the standard deviation of the coordinate distribution of each matching result area, and Di is the distance between the dictionary and the i-th divided window having the smallest matching distance. A, B, and Cj are weight constants, and in particular, Cj is a weight corresponding to the direction of the face of the dictionary j to which the above-mentioned i-th window is matched.

Then, among the plurality of (k = 0 to K) person extraction areas connected to the intermediate server means 2, physical positions (coordinates in the real world) relative to each other. Are associated with the same object, and the image from the person extracting means k having the maximum value Fk among the above-mentioned F values is selected as the optimum one. Here, the physical position is obtained from the imaging environment (the direction of the imaging system of the person extracting means, depression angle, zoom) measured in advance and the coordinates of the person candidate area detected at the time of extracting the person.

Various methods are conceivable for determining A, B, and Cj. For example, the most suitable one is taught in a plurality of sample images, and σx, σy, and Di in those samples are used. Is determined by assuming that the F value of the one taught as optimal is larger than the others. That is, assuming that the sample taught as optimal is sample k ′, Σ (Fk | k = k′−Fk | k ≠ k ′) (12) Learning is performed so as to maximize all the samples. , B, and Cj. Server communication means 13 of FIG.
Transmits the sequence image to the server when the optimum image sequence is prepared by the optimum imaging selection means 12.

Finally, the server means 3 of FIG. 1 will be described. The server means 3 receives the optimal image sequence transmitted from the server communication means 13, converts it into a format conforming to the http protocol, and transmits it. At this time, if a redundant image is included in the sequence and the communication traffic to the server means 3 is large, the server means 3 according to the present invention leaves only one of them and the other Remove and transmit.

Here, the above-mentioned redundancy means that the similarity between successive frames of the optimal image sequence is high, for example, when the sum of image difference amounts between two frames is equal to or less than a certain threshold value, A general one can be used, such as when the correlation value of an image between frames is equal to or greater than another predetermined threshold.

Here, the communication traffic volume to the server includes the number of packets Ph within a certain period of time in HTTP access to the server, the number of packets Pm within a certain period of time used for transmitting the image with the intermediate server 2 and the extraction attribute, and the like. Can be defined as the sum of In the above description, although the optimal image sequence obtained from the intermediate server 2 includes attributes such as a position and an extraction time, in the server means 3, in addition to this, the pixel value of the color space in the area is An average movement vector obtained from the frequency distribution, the position and the extraction time is calculated and added to obtain search tag information. Further, for the face region in the above-described optimal person image sequence, the projection value vector with the face dictionary described in (vi) of the person region confirmation means 7 in FIG. When an image is given, the face of the person can be retrieved from the optimal sequence image in the past monitoring images and presented.

[0056]

According to the present invention, the responsiveness can be improved and the cost can be reduced by sharing functions for each process. In other words, the most basic function for monitoring a person and the person extraction function that requires real-time processing are incorporated in the TV camera, an intermediate server that evaluates the optimality of the extracted video from the TV camera, and processing time such as search tagging is required. It is possible to reduce the responsiveness and cost of transmission and storage by sharing the information with a server that performs processing that does not require real-time processing and transmitting digitalized and summarized information between the servers.

Further, according to the present invention, it is possible to reduce the possibility of erroneous extraction by detecting a person characteristic portion and to detect an optimum image.
That is, in the person extraction function, after extracting a person candidate area, an event other than the intrusion of a person is erroneously detected in order to evaluate whether or not a characteristic part (a face or the like) of the person is present in the area. The frequency can be reduced. In addition, by using the appearance of the extracted human characteristic portion in the screen at that time, it is evaluated whether or not the image frame is good for later confirmation by the observer. An image sequence can be selected.

Further, according to the present invention, it is possible to further improve the transmission and storage efficiency by removing the redundant image and sharing the dynamic processing according to the load. That is, by evaluating the redundancy between the frames of the image that is optimal as the view selected above, by removing the redundant frames, the amount of transmission and storage is reduced,
It is possible to improve efficiency. Also, by automatically rearranging the processing in each processing layer (camera, intermediate server, server) according to the detection frequency of the intruder and the transmission load, it is possible to improve the transmission and storage efficiency of the entire monitoring system. It becomes possible.

Therefore, according to the present invention, it is possible to reduce the cost compared to the related art and to perform the person monitoring without overlooking.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is an overall configuration diagram according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a configuration diagram of a person extracting unit according to the embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart illustrating a first method of a person candidate area extracting unit.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart showing a second method of the person candidate area extracting means.

FIG. 5 is a diagram for explaining a person area confirmation unit according to the present invention.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart showing processing in a person area confirmation unit according to the present invention.

FIG. 7 is a diagram showing a configuration of an intermediate server unit according to the present invention.

FIG. 8 is a flowchart showing processing of a person extraction communication unit in the intermediate server unit according to the present invention.

FIG. 9 is a flowchart showing processing of a person extraction assisting unit in the intermediate server unit according to the present invention.

FIG. 10 is a flowchart showing the processing of the optimum image pickup selecting means in the intermediate server means according to the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

1 ... person extraction means, 2 ... intermediate server means, 3 ... server means

Continued on the front page (51) Int.Cl. ⁷ Identification code FI Theme coat II (Reference) H04N 5/225 H04N 5/225 CF term (Reference) 5B057 AA19 BA11 CA08 CB08 CH14 DA06 DA11 DA20 DB09 DC32 5C022 AA01 AA05 AB61 AC69 5C054 AA01 CD04 CG02 DA09 EA01 EA03 ED17 FC01 FC05 FC11 FC16 GB11 HA18 5C087 AA02 AA03 AA24 BB03 BB12 BB74 DD05 DD20 EE15 FF01 FF02 FF04 GG02 GG06 GG19 GG66 GG67 GG70 5A0915 GA06

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. An image capturing means for capturing an image of a monitoring area, a processing means for performing a predetermined process on the video captured by the image capturing means, and an image on which a predetermined process has been performed by the processing means is received. If the image difference amount between two frames to be calculated is an image whose sum is equal to or smaller than a certain value, a removing unit that removes another image while leaving only one of them, and only an image left by the removing unit An image monitoring apparatus comprising: a transmission unit that converts the data into an http protocol and transmits the converted data.