Image segmentation using a local extrema texture measure

摘要

An image segmentation technique is proposed which uses a texture measure that counts the number of local extrema in a window centered at each picture point. Four gray level pictures are derived, each of which represents a texture or gray level property of the original image. These intermediate pictures are used to derive the number of segments in which to divide the original image. The segmentation is then performed by assigning each pixel in the original image to a region by using a four-dimensional distance measure on the intermediate pictures, comparing each location to each selected segment. This process is then repeated in a hierarchical structure using decreasing window sizes so that smaller regions within the larger ones are defined. The computations required are amenable to real-time video implementation using state-of-the-art devices.