随着“流媒体”技术应用的发展和 MPEG- 4基于内容的功能的提出，视频图象处理领域中，基于对象的分割技术已成为该领域的研究热点.如今视频分割研究已由基于镜头的分割发展到了通过提取视频对象面，来分割出视频对象的阶段，但目前基于对象的分割研究仍处于起步阶段，技术还很不成熟.为了推动该技术进一步发展，在深入分析分割问题本质的基础上，首先提出从分割所利用的信息角度出发来进行分割的技术 ;然后针对分割技术的发展趋势，深入介绍了该研究领域国内外的最新研究算法，并分析了各方法技术的贡献和不足 ;最后提出了一些分割技术值得进一步深入探讨的问题和研究方向

Due to the development of streaming media and emerging of content based functionalities in MPEG 4, object based segmentation technology becomes a popular research in video field. Video segmentation provides an easy and efficient way for video retrieval and coding, whereas it is a difficulty issue in computer vision. From shot based to extraction of video object planes (VOPs), video segmentation develops to extract video object(VO). In fact, shot based segmentation is one of the primary steps in the true object based video segmentation. Currently, segmentation technology for content based representation is still premature. This article gives an overview of existing techniques for object based segmentation. The performance, relative merits and limitations of each of the approaches are comprehensively discussed and contrasted. Different from the traditional classification approaches, this paper presents a new view of analyzing the recent research in this area. Some important and advanced video segmentation algorithms are analyzed and compared both in theory and experimental results. According to different information used in those algorithms, they are classified into several classes. This classification criterion is more revelatory and useful to developing new segmentation algorithm. Finally, some existing problems worth discussing and directions need to further research are proposed.