Author Description

The first book of its kind devoted to this topic, this comprehensive text/reference presents state-of-the-art research and reviews current challenges in the application of computer vision to problems in sports. Opening with a detailed introduction to the use of computer vision across the entire life-cycle of a sports event, the text then progresses to examine cutting-edge techniques for tracking the ball, obtaining the whereabouts and pose of the players, and identifying the sport being played from video footage. The work concludes by investigating a selection of systems for the automatic analysis and classification of sports play. Topics and features: describes the latest research into ball tracking, addressing the challenges posed by the presence of occlusions and the use of only a small number of cameras; reviews various systems for player tracking and pose estimation; presents approaches for the improved generation of statistics and synthesis of virtual views; explores the "higher level" analysis of sports, from identifying types of sports to recognizing particular team behaviors based on multiple event or motion detections; discusses the detection of specific kinds of events for automatic highlights generation or searching of video archives. The insights provided by this pioneering collection will be of great interest to researchers and practitioners involved in computer vision, sports analysis and media production. Prof. Thomas B. Moeslund is Head of Media Technology, Aalborg, and Head of the Visual Analysis of People Lab at Aalborg University, Denmark. Dr. Graham Thomas leads the Immersive and Interactive Content team at BBC Research & Development, London, UK. Prof. Adrian Hilton is Director of the Centre for Vision, Speech and Signal Processing at the University of Surrey, Guildford, UK.