An efficient segmentation method based on dynamic graph merging
Abstract
A novel energy functional based on the Mumford–Shah model is established for performing automatic image segmentation. And in order to optimize the global model using graph-based methods, we develop a localized formula. Then, we propose a merging predicate for determining whether an edge connecting two neighboring pixels or regions merge. The dynamic graph merging (DGM) method is applied based on this merging predicate. That is, those edges with large energy merge and the edges with low energy are remained, such that the energy functional is minimized. Compared with other graph-based segmentation methods, our algorithm based on DGM has an important characteristic which is its ability to produce good segmentation on some complex texture images. Another characteristic is that this segmentation algorithm can avoid the “shrinking bias” problem. We also apply DGM to interactive image segmentation and find the results to be encouraging too.
