Foreground detector for video analytics system

A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium containing a program, which when executed on a processor, performs an operation for generating a background model of image data, the operation comprising:

• receiving image data, wherein the image data includes one or more appearance values for each of a plurality of pixels;
• classifying each pixel as depicting either foreground or background by comparing the one or more appearance values of each pixel to a background model of the image data;
• and
• performing one or more context based evaluations on one or more of the pixels classified as depicting foreground, wherein the context based evaluations selectively reclassifies one or more of the pixels as depicting foreground or background based on the classification of other pixels in the image data as depicting either foreground or background.

A system, comprising:

• a video input source configured to provide image data;
• a central processing unit (CPU);
• a graphics processing unit (GPU);
• and
• a memory containing a program, which, when executed on the CPU and GPU is configured to perform an operation for generating a background model of image data, the operation comprising:
• receiving image data, wherein the image data includes one or more appearance values for each of a plurality of pixels,
• classifying each pixel as depicting either foreground or background by comparing the one or more appearance values of each pixel to a background model of the image data, and
• performing one or more context based evaluations on one or more of the pixels classified as depicting foreground, wherein the context based evaluations selectively reclassifies one or more of the pixels as depicting foreground or background based on the classification of other pixels in the image data as depicting either foreground or background.