Automatic generation of runner's stroboscopic image using a handheld camera

This paper discusses the method for the automatically generating stroboscopic image from a video image using a handheld camera comprehensively. The stroboscopic image can be used in order to measure stride length and speed of the runner based on the authors' previously proposed method, in which it is shown that measuring stride length and speed of the runner from the stroboscopic image is theoretically possible. The proposed automatic stroboscopic image generating method has two steps. The first step is generating a stitched background image from input video image. In the second step, runner images extracted from arbitrary frames are overlapped onto the stitched background image. Thus, this method can generate a stroboscopic image including the runners in arbitrary frames without overwriting them in some frames. These processes can be executed automatically, and these are noteworthy features. In the experiments under various environment to show the effectiveness of this method, it was confirmed that could generate a stroboscopic images well in respectively environment. It is also demonstrated that stride length and speed of the runner captured into the generated stroboscopic image can be measured with satisfactory accuracy by manually selected landing points in the stroboscopic image.