1. A system for parametric background modeling in a computer vision system for enabling foreground object detection, comprising: a video acquisition module for receiving video data from a sequence of frames acquired from an associated image capture device monitoring a scene of interest, wherein the video acquisition module includes an at least one video capture device; a fit test module for performing pixel-wise goodness of fit tests for pixel values in the incoming frames received from the video acquisition module, wherein the fit test module identifies the pixels associated with the foreground object from the video data obtained from the at least one video capture device where the identified pixels are determined to belong to the foreground or to the background according to the individual pixel's RGB value and to the individual pixel's corresponding mixture model, the identified pixels defining a foreground mask representative of the identified foreground object; and a foreground-aware background estimation module for maintaining a parametric background model wherein the foreground-aware background estimation module includes a processor for updating individual pixel models in accordance with incoming pixel values of the current frame, whereby only the pixels outside of the foreground mask are updated with a new individual pixel model, leaving the models for pixels in the foreground mask unchanged.