Image segmentation by combining the global and local properties

- We calculate the means of different pixel classes from slope difference distribution.
- The image is segmented by clustering the pixels to its nearest mean.
- The segmentation is further refined by minimizing the energy of its Gibbs distribution.
- The boundary of the refined segmentation is deformed to the nearest detected canny edges.

Image segmentation plays a fundamental role in many computer vision applications. It is challenging because of the vast variety of images involved and the diverse segmentation requirements in different applications. As a result, it remains an open problem after so many years of study by researchers all over the world. In this paper, we propose to segment the image by combing its global and local properties. The global properties of the image are characterized by the mean values of different pixel classes and the continuous boundary of the object or region. The local properties are characterized by the interactions of neighboring pixels and the image edge. The proposed approach consists of four basic parts corresponding to the global or local property of the image respectively: (1) The slope difference distribution that is used to compute the global mean values of different pixel classes; (2) Energy minimization to remove inhomogeneity based on Gibbs distribution that complies with local interactions of neighboring pixels; (3) The Canny operator that is used to detect the local edge of the object or the region; (4) The polynomial spline that is used to smooth the boundary of the object or the region. These four basic parts are applied one by one and each of them is indispensable for the achieved high accuracy. A large variety of images are used to validate the proposed approach and the results are favorable.