Abstract: A method for automatic, stable and robust object extraction of moving objects in color video frames, achieved without any prior knowledge of the video content. For high rate video, the method includes providing at least a first and a second high frame rate video frames, performing a reciprocal illumination correction of the first and second video frames to yield respective first and second smoothed frames, performing a change detection operation between the first and second smoothed frames to obtain a difference image, and performing a local adaptive thresholding operation on the difference image to generate a binary image containing extracted objects, the local thresholding operation using a weight test to determine a boundary of each of the extracted objects. For an extracted object with a fragmented boundary, the method further comprises re-unifying the boundary.