Color Separation for Image Segmentation

Image segmentation is a fundamental problem in computer vision that has drawn intensive research attention during the past few decades, resulting in a variety of segmentation algorithms. Segmentation is often formulated as a Markov random field (MRF) and the solution corresponding to the maximum a posteriori probability (MAP) is found using energy minimiza- tion framework. Many standard segmentation techniques rely on foreground and background appearance models given a priori. In this case the corresponding energy can be efficiently op- timized globally. If the appearance models are not known, the energy becomes NP-hard, and many methods resort to iterative schemes that jointly optimize appearance and segmentation. Such algorithms can only guarantee local minimum. Here we propose a new energy term explicitly measuring L1 distance between the object and background appearance models that can be globally maximized in one graph cut. Our method directly tries to minimize the appearance overlap between the segments. We show that in many applications including interactive segmentation, shape matching, segmentation from stereo pairs and saliency segmentation our simple term makes NP-hard segmentation functionals unnecessary and renders good segmentation performance both qualitatively and quantitatively

Multiscale Discriminant Saliency for Visual Attention

The bottom-up saliency, an early stage of humans' visual attention, can be considered as a binary classification problem between center and surround classes. Discriminant power of features for the classification is measured as mutual information between features and two classes distribution. The estimated discrepancy of two feature classes very much depends on considered scale levels; then, multi-scale structure and discriminant power are integrated by employing discrete wavelet features and Hidden markov tree (HMT). With wavelet coefficients and Hidden Markov Tree parameters, quad-tree like label structures are constructed and utilized in maximum a posterior probability (MAP) of hidden class variables at corresponding dyadic sub-squares. Then, saliency value for each dyadic square at each scale level is computed with discriminant power principle and the MAP. Finally, across multiple scales is integrated the final saliency map by an information maximization rule. Both standard quantitative tools such as NSS, LCC, AUC and qualitative assessments are used for evaluating the proposed multiscale discriminant saliency method (MDIS) against the well-know information-based saliency method AIM on its Bruce Database wity eye-tracking data. Simulation results are presented and analyzed to verify the validity of MDIS as well as point out its disadvantages for further research direction.Comment: 16 pages, ICCSA 2013 - BIOCA sessio

3D medical volume segmentation using hybrid multiresolution statistical approaches

This article is available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund. Copyright © 2010 S AlZu’bi and A Amira.3D volume segmentation is the process of partitioning voxels into 3D regions (subvolumes) that represent meaningful physical entities which are more meaningful and easier to analyze and usable in future applications. Multiresolution Analysis (MRA) enables the preservation of an image according to certain levels of resolution or blurring. Because of multiresolution quality, wavelets have been deployed in image compression, denoising, and classification. This paper focuses on the implementation of efficient medical volume segmentation techniques. Multiresolution analysis including 3D wavelet and ridgelet has been used for feature extraction which can be modeled using Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) to segment the volume slices. A comparison study has been carried out to evaluate 2D and 3D techniques which reveals that 3D methodologies can accurately detect the Region Of Interest (ROI). Automatic segmentation has been achieved using HMMs where the ROI is detected accurately but suffers a long computation time for its calculations

Bayesian Spatial Binary Regression for Label Fusion in Structural Neuroimaging

Many analyses of neuroimaging data involve studying one or more regions of interest (ROIs) in a brain image. In order to do so, each ROI must first be identified. Since every brain is unique, the location, size, and shape of each ROI varies across subjects. Thus, each ROI in a brain image must either be manually identified or (semi-) automatically delineated, a task referred to as segmentation. Automatic segmentation often involves mapping a previously manually segmented image to a new brain image and propagating the labels to obtain an estimate of where each ROI is located in the new image. A more recent approach to this problem is to propagate labels from multiple manually segmented atlases and combine the results using a process known as label fusion. To date, most label fusion algorithms either employ voting procedures or impose prior structure and subsequently find the maximum a posteriori estimator (i.e., the posterior mode) through optimization. We propose using a fully Bayesian spatial regression model for label fusion that facilitates direct incorporation of covariate information while making accessible the entire posterior distribution. We discuss the implementation of our model via Markov chain Monte Carlo and illustrate the procedure through both simulation and application to segmentation of the hippocampus, an anatomical structure known to be associated with Alzheimer's disease.Comment: 24 pages, 10 figure

Neighbourhood-consensus message passing and its potentials in image processing applications

In this paper, a novel algorithm for inference in Markov Random Fields (MRFs) is presented. Its goal is to find approximate maximum a posteriori estimates in a simple manner by combining neighbourhood influence of iterated conditional modes (ICM) and message passing of loopy belief propagation (LBP). We call the proposed method neighbourhood-consensus message passing because a single joint message is sent from the specified neighbourhood to the central node. The message, as a function of beliefs, represents the agreement of all nodes within the neighbourhood regarding the labels of the central node. This way we are able to overcome the disadvantages of reference algorithms, ICM and LBP. On one hand, more information is propagated in comparison with ICM, while on the other hand, the huge amount of pairwise interactions is avoided in comparison with LBP by working with neighbourhoods. The idea is related to the previously developed iterated conditional expectations algorithm. Here we revisit it and redefine it in a message passing framework in a more general form. The results on three different benchmarks demonstrate that the proposed technique can perform well both for binary and multi-label MRFs without any limitations on the model definition. Furthermore, it manifests improved performance over related techniques either in terms of quality and/or speed

Hidden Gibbs random fields model selection using Block Likelihood Information Criterion

Performing model selection between Gibbs random fields is a very challenging task. Indeed, due to the Markovian dependence structure, the normalizing constant of the fields cannot be computed using standard analytical or numerical methods. Furthermore, such unobserved fields cannot be integrated out and the likelihood evaluztion is a doubly intractable problem. This forms a central issue to pick the model that best fits an observed data. We introduce a new approximate version of the Bayesian Information Criterion. We partition the lattice into continuous rectangular blocks and we approximate the probability measure of the hidden Gibbs field by the product of some Gibbs distributions over the blocks. On that basis, we estimate the likelihood and derive the Block Likelihood Information Criterion (BLIC) that answers model choice questions such as the selection of the dependency structure or the number of latent states. We study the performances of BLIC for those questions. In addition, we present a comparison with ABC algorithms to point out that the novel criterion offers a better trade-off between time efficiency and reliable results