Using 2D Topological Map Information in a Markovian Image Segmentation

Abstract: Topological map is a mathematical model of labeled image representation which contains both topological and geometrical information. In this work, we use this model to improve a Markovian segmentation algorithm. Image segmentation methods based on Markovian assumption consist in optimizing a Gibbs energy function. This energy function can be given by a sum of potentials which could be based on the shape or the size of a region, the number of adjacencies,... and can be computed by using topological map. In this work we propose the integration of a new potential: the global linearity of the boundaries, and show how this potential can be extracted from the topological map. Moreover, to decrease the complexity of our algorithm, we propose a local modification of the topological map in order to avoid the reconstruction of the entire structure.

Keywords: Markovian segmentation; topological maps; region segmentation; boundaries linearity.