Besides powering autonomous vehicles and other cutting-edge systems, computer vision technology is also creating new applications for the traditional closed-circuit camera.

Hitachi Ltd. hopes to capitalize on the opportunity with a new analytics platform that promises to help organizations unlock the full potential of their video data. Hitachi Video Analytics sets itself apart by tackling several of the challenges that are normally involved in automated video processing.

The first and biggest item on the list is accuracy. Hitachi Video Analytics employs specialized filtering algorithms to mitigate the impact of rain, fog and other environmental conditions that may hurt visibility. The software then runs footage through an image recognition mechanism that performs what the company refers to as “4-D reconstruction.” The technology can analyze the velocity of an object, its travel distance and a variety of other factors to fill in details that the raw video feed may not provide.

As a result, Hitachi says, its platform is accurate enough to read license plates. The software is capable of recognizing people, too, but the process is handled somewhat differently. Extra precautions are taken with footage to address the other major challenge that is involved in live video processing besides accuracy: upholding privacy.

Hitachi Video Analytics provides the ability to pixelate not only faces but also clothing, badges and other details that may reveal the identify of the subject. Moreover, every attempt to access platform is logged to help prevent misuse. This latter feature should be most appealing to companies in regulated industries such as healthcare and finance where privacy requirements are particularly stringent.

Hitachi sees its platform coming handy in other environments, too. A retailer, for instance, could employ the software to measure queue length in its stores and identify locations where additional cashiers may be needed. Hitachi Video Analytics can similarly help process surveillance footage at busy venues where there’s too much foot traffic for security teams to keep track of everything. A built-in alerting mechanism automatically points out objects of interest to speed up response times.

Hitachi isn’t the only company that offers to ease the analysis of video footage, however. Microsoft Corp. joined the fray in October by launching a set of computer vision services capable of detecting movement, recognize specific people and even identify what emotions they’re expressing in a given moment.

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