Quad Tree Segmentation of Specular Imagery Via Besov Space Merge Criterion

Abstract

Certain specular types of sensor images (e.g., laser) contain vital information which is difficult to glean from non-specular sources. The present and increasing deluge of these types of images has created a critical need for image processing algorithms which reduce the workload for the image analyst by performing some of his/her functions automatically. Many of these algorithms are based on image segmentation a procedure having 1.) high separability between target object and background and 2.) low computational intensity implementation as two key goals. A large number of algorithms for automatic segmentation of images have been tendered, most occuring within the Mumford-Shah paradigm which uses approximation error, boundary length, and variance as weighted terms in an energy functional. The new idea of the present paper is to generalize the Mumford-Shah variance energy so that it directly measures the relative smoothness memberships of target and object background. This is especially important in the application to segmentation of specular types of images which tend to require the separation of subtle grades of smoothness and the unraveling of delicate smoothness space interpolations. The fast wavelet transform answers the purposes of efficient determination of smoothness membership at global as well as local levels and works well in a quad tree architecture.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 01, 1998
Accession Number
ADA399423

Entities

People

  • J. T. Armstrong
  • Robert Quadt
  • S. A. Imhoff
  • T. I. Seidman

Organizations

  • Northrop Grumman

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Abstracts
  • Algorithms
  • Applied Mathematics
  • Automatic
  • Boundaries
  • Computer Vision
  • Image Compression
  • Image Processing
  • Image Recognition
  • Image Segmentation
  • Information Processing
  • Intensity
  • Interpolation
  • Mathematical Analysis
  • Mathematics
  • Wavelet Transforms
  • Workload

Readers

  • Calculus or Mathematical Analysis
  • Educational Psychology
  • Image Processing and Computer Vision.

Technology Areas

  • Directed Energy
  • Space
  • Space - Space Objects