Geodesic Matting: A Framework for Fast Interactive Image and Video Segmentation and Matting (PREPRINT)

Abstract

An interactive framework for soft segmentation and matting of natural images and videos is presented in this paper. The proposed technique is based on the optimal, linear time, computation of weighted geodesic distances to user-provided scribbles, from which the whole data is automatically segmented. The weights are based on spatial and/or temporal gradients, considering the statistics of the pixels scribbled by the user, without explicit optical flow or any advanced and often computationally expensive feature detectors. These could be naturally added to the proposed framework as well if desired, in the form of weights in the geodesic distances. An automatic localized refinement step follows this fast segmentation in order to further improve the results and accurately compute the corresponding matte function. Additional constraints into the distance definition permit to efficiently handle occlusions such as people or objects crossing each other in a video sequence. The presentation of the framework is complemented with numerous and diverse examples, including extraction of moving foreground from dynamic background in video, natural and 3D medical images, and comparisons with the recent literature.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 03, 2008
Accession Number
ADA478586

Entities

People

  • Guillermo Sapiro
  • Xue Bai

Organizations

  • University of Minnesota

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Algorithms
  • Boundaries
  • Computations
  • Computer Programs
  • Computer Vision
  • Crossings
  • Equations
  • Image Processing
  • Image Segmentation
  • Images
  • Literature
  • Mathematics
  • Probability
  • Segmented
  • Statistics
  • Three Dimensional
  • Vascular System Injuries

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Computer Vision.
  • Operations Research