A new approach to template tracking is presented, incorporating three distinct contributions. Firstly, an explicit definition for a feature track is given. Secondly, the advantages of an image preprocessing stage are demonstrated and, in particular, the effectiveness of highly compressed image patch data stored in k-d trees for fast and discriminatory image patch searches. Thirdly, the k-d trees are used to generate multiple track hypotheses which are efficiently merged to give the optimal

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... ion using dynamic programming. The explicit separation of feature detection and trajectory determination creates the basis for the novel use of k-d trees and dynamic programming. Multiple appearances and occlusion handling are seamlessly integrated into this framework. Appearance variation through the sequence is robustly handled in an iterative process. The work presented is a significant foundation for a powerful off-line feature tracking system, particularly in the context of interactive applications. 1 e.g. 'PAL', by which we mean 576×720 pixel frames at 25fps.