Detecting foreground pixels is the rst step to detect objects of interest in videos. The objective of this thesis is to propose a new background estimation method to detect foreground pixels. The proposed method can adapt the estimated background to various changes of environment (e.g. changes of illumination or of contextual objects). The proposed background estimation method consists of a new background subtraction algorithm to detect foreground pixels, post-processing algorithms to remove shadow and highlight, and a controller to adapt the background subtraction algorithm to the current scene conditions. The new background subtraction algorithm takes into account the scene characteristics such as dynamic background (e.g. tree leave motio...