# Multi-Object Tracking and Segmentation via Neural Message Passing

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.07454 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.07454/

## Key facts

- Cited by 9 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 57 of its 108 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 15 Jul 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 57)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.0312/) (2014)
- [Semi-Supervised Classification with Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.02907/) (2016)
- [Faster R-CNN: Towards Real-Time Object Detection with Region Proposal Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.01497/) (2015)
- [Mask R-CNN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06870/) (2017)
- [Feature Pyramid Networks for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.03144/) (2016)
- [Neural Message Passing for Quantum Chemistry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.01212/) (2017)
- [Aggregated Residual Transformations for Deep Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.05431/) (2016)
- [Convolutional Neural Networks on Graphs with Fast Localized Spectral Filtering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.09375/) (2016)
- [YOLO9000: Better, Faster, Stronger](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.08242/) (2016)
- [Relational inductive biases, deep learning, and graph networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.01261/) (2018)
- [Spectral Networks and Locally Connected Networks on Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.6203/) (2013)
- [Simple Online and Realtime Tracking with a Deep Association Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.07402/) (2017)
- [Simple Online and Realtime Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.00763/) (2016)
- [Performance Measures and a Data Set for Multi-Target, Multi-Camera Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.01775/) (2016)
- [HOTA: A Higher Order Metric for Evaluating Multi-Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.07736/) (2020)
- [MOT16: A Benchmark for Multi-Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.00831/) (2016)
- [TrackFormer: Multi-Object Tracking with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.02702/) (2021)
- [Interaction Networks for Learning about Objects, Relations and Physics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00222/) (2016)
- [FairMOT: On the Fairness of Detection and Re-Identification in Multiple Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.01888/) (2020)
- [Tracking Objects as Points](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.01177/) (2020)
- [Deep Layer Aggregation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.06484/) (2017)
- [Tracking without bells and whistles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.05625/) (2019)
- [MOT20: A benchmark for multi object tracking in crowded scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.09003/) (2020)
- [Neural Relational Inference for Interacting Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.04687/) (2018)
- [Towards Real-Time Multi-Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.12605/) (2019)
- [CrowdHuman: A Benchmark for Detecting Human in a Crowd](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.00123/) (2018)
- [MOTS: Multi-Object Tracking and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.03604/) (2019)
- [Quasi-Dense Similarity Learning for Multiple Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.06664/) (2020)
- [Learning a Neural Solver for Multiple Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.07515/) (2019)

## Built on by (most cited first, 9 of 9)

- [Unifying Short and Long-Term Tracking with Graph Hierarchies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.03038/) (2022)
- [Forging Vision Foundation Models for Autonomous Driving: Challenges, Methodologies, and Opportunities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.08045/) (2024)
- [DIVOTrack: A Novel Dataset and Baseline Method for Cross-View Multi-Object Tracking in DIVerse Open Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.07676/) (2023)
- [Multi-Scene Generalized Trajectory Global Graph Solver with Composite Nodes for Multiple Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.08951/) (2023)
- [SPAMming Labels: Efficient Annotations for the Trackers of Tomorrow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.11426/) (2024)
- [Seg2Track-SAM2: SAM2-based Multi-object Tracking and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.11772/) (2025)
- [NOOUGAT: Towards Unified Online and Offline Multi-Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.02111/) (2025)
- [A Comprehensive Survey on Video Scene Parsing:Advances, Challenges, and Prospects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.13552/) (2025)
- [Depth-Aware Scoring and Hierarchical Alignment for Multiple Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.00774/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Graphs offer a natural way to formulate Multiple Object Tracking (MOT) and Multiple Object Tracking and Segmentation (MOTS) within the tracking-by-detection paradigm. However, they also introduce a major challenge for learning methods, as defining a model that can operate on such structured domain is not trivial. In this work, we exploit the classical network flow formulation of MOT to define a fully differentiable framework based on Message Passing Networks (MPNs). By operating directly on the graph domain, our method can reason globally over an entire set of detections and exploit contextual features. It then jointly predicts both final solutions for the data association problem and segmentation masks for all objects in the scene while exploiting synergies between the two tasks. We achieve state-of-the-art results for both tracking and segmentation in several publicly available datasets. Our code is available at github.com/ocetintas/MPNTrackSeg.