A tensorial framework for color images

This paper proposes a new tensorial color representation, obtained by making a correspondence between color models (HSL, IHSL, HSV, RGB and CIELUV) and tensors. Based on this representation, a proposed tensorial morphological gradient (TMG), defined as the maximum dissimilarity over the neighborhood, was tested using several tensor similarity measures. Experimental results illustrate which color models are more suitable to the proposed tensorial representation and which measures give best results in the TMG computation. The watershed transform was used to demonstrate that the proposed representation and the TMG can be applied to segment color images. A quantitative analysis of segmentation results was also conducted.