Boundary detection using simulation of particle motion in a vector image field

Edge-Based Color Image Segmentation Using Particle Motion in a Vector Image Field Derived from Local Color Distance Images

This paper presents an edge-based color image segmentation approach, derived from the method of particle motion in a vector image field, which could previously be applied only to monochrome images. Rather than using an edge vector field derived from a gradient vector field and a normal compressive vector field derived from a Laplacian-gradient vector field, two novel orthogonal vector fields were directly computed from a color image, one parallel and another orthogonal to the edges. These were then used in the model to force a particle to move along the object edges. The normal compressive vector field is created from the collection of the center-to-centroid vectors of local color distance images. The edge vector field is later derived from the normal compressive vector field so as to obtain a vector field analogous to a Hamiltonian gradient vector field. Using the PASCAL Visual Object Classes Challenge 2012 (VOC2012), the Berkeley Segmentation Data Set, and Benchmarks 500 (BSDS500), the benchmark score of the proposed method is provided in comparison to those of the traditional particle motion in a vector image field (PMVIF), Watershed, simple linear iterative clustering (SLIC), K-means, mean shift, and J-value segmentation (JSEG). The proposed method yields better Rand index (RI), global consistency error (GCE), normalized variation of information (NVI), boundary displacement error (BDE), Dice coefficients, faster computation time, and noise resistance.

Image flows and one-liner graphical image representation

This paper introduces a novel graphical image representation consisting of a single curve-the one-liner. The first step of the algorithm involves the detection and ranking of image edges. A new edge exploration technique is used to perform both tasks simultaneously. This process is based on image flows. It uses a gradient vector field and a new operator to explore image edges. Estimation of the derivatives of the image is performed by using local Taylor expansions in conjunction with a weighted least-squares method. This process finds all the possible image edges without any pruning, and collects information that allows the edges found to be prioritized. This enables the most important edges to be selected to form a skeleton of the representation sought. The next step connects the selected edges into one continuous curve-the one-liner. It orders the selected edges and determines the curves connecting them. These two problems are solved separately. Since the abstract graph setting of the first problem is NP-complete, we reduce it to a variant of the traveling salesman problem and compute an approximate solution to it. We solve the second problem by using Dijkstra's shortest-path algorithm. The full software implementation for the entire one-liner determination process is available.