to 1.5% the image size). The upper extent threshold
is fixed at 0.35 for the warning signs. The prohibitory
signs category includes the “no entry” sign, so the ex-
tent threshold is fixed at 0.65 at the risk of a higher
false alarm rate. The lower threshold is not used, to
accept occluded objects. The validity range for angle
in the case of warning signs is set to [50
◦
,70
◦
].
Sequences S1 and S4 are used to set the value α
and the thresholds of eccentricity and symmetry. The
algorithm is then tested on sequences S2, S3 and S5.
5.1 Considering Color and Eccentricity
In this series of experiments, the symmetry selection
is disabled, to focus on the effect of colour and ec-
centricity criteria. The influence of the red classi-
fication parameter, α and of the eccentricity thresh-
old is illustrated by the ROC curves plotted on fig. 3
for prohibitory signs and on fig. 5 for warning signs.
In these experiments, the eccentricity threshold varies
over the range [0.6, 1], and α is fixed to 0.55 or 0.6.
For both categories, α = 0.55 naturally yields more
false alarms than α = 0.6 but it may also be noticed
that the number of true positive is lower. In fact, since
more pixels are classified as red when α = 0.55, so
the red component that corresponds to the sign border
may connect with background elements and then, be
filtered off by the shape analysis stage. The influence
of the color parameter might be worth a more thor-
ough study. However, the value of α = 0.6 will be
considered in the remaining of the paper.
Concerning eccentricity, the best detection scores
are obtained for a threshold of 1, but at the price of
a high false alarm rate. When the test becomes more
selective, typically for thresholds under 0.85, partly
occulted objects are more difficultly detected. No-
tice that, for prohibitory signs, varying the eccentric-
ity threshold from 0.85 to 0.9 improves the true de-
tection rate faster than the false alarm rate. Moreover,
true detection rate almost reaches its maximum for a
threshold of 0.9. Hence we retain this value for the
rest of our experiments. Similarly, we chose the value
of 0.85 in the case of warning signs.
The ROC curves for S4 are easily distinguishable
from those corresponding to S1. The false alarm rate
is much higher in S4 than in S1. Possible explanations
are different cameras, colorization settings, compres-
sion rates and nature of scenes (S4 being more urban
than S1, for example). This shall be investigated in a
near future.
It may be noticed that for prohibitory signs, a
100% true positive rate (TPR
i
) is never reached.
Some non-detected traffic signs correspond to far-
away signs that may be detected when they appear
closer. When TPR
rs
is considered, the detection rate
reaches 94.4% for the S1 sequence (1 road sign is
never detected) and 83.3% for the S4 sequence (3 road
signs are missed). Non-detected signs correspond to
a severely worn-out sign (see Fig. 2(e)) and to signs
parallel to the axis of the road. In the case of warning
signs, non-detected objects in S1 correspond to old-
fashioned, non-standard, worn-out or temporary signs
and to one sign with yellow flashes (see Fig. 2(f)).
Note that all warning signs are detected in S4.
5.2 Influence of Symmetry
In this experiment, the symmetry threshold varies
over the range [0, 70]. The value 0 corresponds to
no symmetry selection. The resulting ROC curves
are plotted on fig. 4 and fig. 6. Examples of good
detection, including difficult scenes, are presented on
fig. 2(a)-(d). Selection based on symmetry has a no-
ticeable impact on the false alarm rate. This effect
is less obvious for warning signs than for prohibitory
signs due to a higher extent threshold. However, the
initial false positive rate was already weak for warn-
ing signs, thanks to a more selective geometrical cri-
terion, namely selection according to angles. Re-
call that the extent criterion is also more efficient for
warning signs than for prohibitory ones. This raises
the question of the utility of selection on symmetry,
which is rather costly in terms of computation time
for polygonal objects, since the number of false posi-
tive may already be low for certain sequences.
In general, selection on symmetry tends to discard
the first image of the series a road signs appears in,
but this has no impact in our application. For circular
signs, 3 worn-out “no parking” signs are lost in S1. In
France, these signs have a red ring and a blue interior.
The lack of contrast between the two colors explain
the non-detection. This might be overcome by using
other modalities than luminance. For warning signs,
selection on symmetry does not decrease the true pos-
itive rate TPR
rs
, except for a high threshold.
In conclusion, selection on symmetry allows
strongly decreasing the number of false positives for
radial objects. Its interest appears more clearly than
for polygonal road signs.
5.3 Validation
The above experiments have lead to the choice of 0.9
for the eccentricity and 40 (resp. 30) for the symmetry
threshold in the case of prohibitory (resp. warning)
signs. We also take α = 0.6, and the other parameters
are set as explained at the beginning of sec. 5. In this
validation experiment,we apply the detector with the
EVALUATION OF A ROAD SIGN PRE-DETECTION SYSTEM BY IMAGE ANALYSIS
365