A DSP-based system is developed in this thesis for tracking ¡§an arbitrary-shaped object¡¨. It uses CCD camera to capture images, and detects in the video sequence. When we want to track a target that we interest, we can make the target in the view of camera. If the target move, the system will lock it and extract its contour by using active contour model. After extracting contour, the system will start to track target and shows the locked image on the LCD screen. The tracking system includes three sub-systems : ¡§Moving Object Detection¡¨, ¡§Active Contour Model¡¨, and ¡§Contour Matching¡¨. From the results of experiment, it can meet the expectation and gain good performance and robustness.