ABSTRACT:The aim of this work is to present a method for the segmentation of images based on local higher order statistics. The algorithm can be applied for the separation of objects from a texture background and the segmentation of textures. Key words: image processing; computer vision; higher order statistics; image classification and detection; texture discriminants; segmentation
I. INTRODUCTIONThis article is a continuation of Shahshahani (2001, 2002), where some methods for the classification of images and locating objects within images were presented. The methods of Farhadi and Shahshahani are refined here in several ways. The key differentiation method of Farhadi and Shahshahani was based on examining certain curves reflecting local second and higher order statistics of the image. Here we extract information from the statistical invariants by using discrete cosine transform and construct new scatter plots and investigate their geometric properties. The information is used to obtain segmentation of images. There is extensive literature on segmentation and no review of the literature is possible within the limitations of this article. As examples we mention Charalampidis and Kasparis (2002), Malik et al. (2001), Minotte et al. (2000), Rosenfeld (2000), Rezaee et al. (2000), and Shi and Malik (2000), where different methods are employed for identifying regions and their boundaries to achieve segmentation. Most approaches are based on intensity and proximity analysis and are computationally intensive. In some approaches one makes use of a data bank or training to identify the boundaries of desired regions. Here we rely exclusively on local statistical analysis of the data and the results, as demonstrated in the article, are promising. Needless to say one can make improvements on the performance by a judicious use of a data bank. The complexity of our proposed algorithms is O(ᏺ), and therefore its implementation is practical.