1. A method for detecting and tracking objects in a sequence of images of a scene acquired by a stationary camera, comprising for each image in the sequence the steps of: determining a first set of candidate foreground regions according to a background model; determining a second set of candidate foreground regions according to a set of foreground models; and validating the candidate foreground regions in the first set and the second set to produce a final set of foreground regions in the image that include the objects present in the image, wherein the validating uses amounts of overlap between regions from the first set and the second set and uses all of the following cues to produce the final set of foreground regions: object identity, object size, object motion energy, and correlation with a representative background image, such as a mean background image, wherein object motion energy is determined using a difference image determined from recent images from the sequence, and wherein the steps are performed in a processor.