The invention relates to a
covariance matching-based active contour tracking method and belongs to the technical field of visual tracking. In the
covariance matching-based active contour tracking method, an
image area energy term is modeled by using non-Euclidean geometry. The method comprises the following steps of: manually initializing a curve surrounding an objective and establishing a
covariance matrix as a template of an objective contour for an area surrounded by the curve in a first frame; after the contour of the objective is obtained, recording a
level set function value of the template to make preparation for a prior shape and calculating a symbolized distance function of the template; from the image of the next frame, deducing a
gradient descent flow from a result of the previous frame according to the established
energy functional and updating the
level set function; and checking whether iteration stops or not. In the method, the tracking result is more accurate; meanwhile, the
covariance matrix is used as an area descriptor and all kinds of information in an
image sequence and the correlation between all kinds of information are considered comprehensively, and the method does not depend on foreground and
background information distribution, so that the tracking method has universality.