Abstract: For intelligent transportation monitoring systems, a background extraction method based on differential mean and shadow detection using matrix subregion partition are proposed to improve the quality and speed of the vehicle image detection. The real-time traffic information was collected and its video images were sophisticatedly processed. Finally, a video vehicle monitoring prototype was setup to realize the detection of moving vehicles. Experimental results show that this method has the advantages of simplicity, robustness and small amount of calculation. It could extract a background image quickly and detect a complete shadow of vehicles. This method could meet the requirements of real-time detection of multiple moving targets.