A video surveillance system with real-time object re-identification capabilities, which employs an object re-identification algorithm and an edge computing architecture. An operator monitors video images from the multiple cameras, and when a target object is observed, a target image containing the object is transmitted to all video cameras for object re-identification. Each video camera has dedicated processing circuitry that performs an object re-identification algorithm to identify the target in video images captured by that camera in real time. The algorithm calculates a frequency domain similarity measure between the target image and test images captured by the camera. The similarity measure in the frequency domain is calculated as a dot product of the 1D discrete Fourier transforms of the target image data and of the test image data. The multiple cameras also transmit object re-identification results to each other to achieve more efficient and intelligent object re-identification.