Unsupervised images segmentation via incremental dictionary learning based sparse representation

In this paper we propose a novel Dictionary Learning and Sparse Representation-based Classifier (DLSRC) for image segmentation. In DLSRC, instances-based learning is adopted to find representative dictionaries that can sparsely code various classes of prototype samples in images. Then an incremental version of DLSRC, IDLSRC, is advanced for incremental learning of accumulating knowledge obtained from labeled data. The unsupervised clustering algorithm provides initial labeled samples, and then the labels of candidate samples are incrementally predicted by defining a consistency-enhanced evaluation function. Some experiments are taken on both the artificial texture images and real Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images, to investigate the performance of DLSRC and IDLSRC. Some aspects including (1) the comparison of DLSRC with the Sparse Representation based Classifier (SRC) and some unsupervised clustering approaches, (2) the comparison of IDLSRC with DLSRC, are tested, and the results prove the superiority of our proposed method to its counterparts.