Abstract. Conventional tracking methods encounter difficulties as the number of objects, clutter, and sensors increase, because of
the requirement for data association. Statistical tracking, based on the concept of network tomography, is an alternative
that avoids data association. It estimates the number of trips made from one region to another in a scene based on interregion
boundary traffic counts accumulated over time. It is not necessary to track an object through a scene to determine when an
object crosses a boundary. This paper describes statistical tracing and presents an evaluation based on the estimation of
pedestrian and vehicular traffic intensities at an intersection over a period of 1 month. We compare the results with those
from a multiple-hypothesis tracker and manually counted ground-truth estimates.
Key words: Tracking – Statistics – Network tomography – Statistical methods – Video – Motion
Received: 30 August 2001 / Accepted: 28 May 2002
Correspondence to: J.E. Boyd