INTERACTIVE IMAGE SEGMENTATION WITH INTEGRATED USE OF THE MARKERS AND THE HIERARCHICAL WATERSHED APPROACHES

The watershed transform is a well-known approach for image segmentation. Watershed from markers and hierarchical watershed are derived from the watershed transform and are suitable for interactive image segmentation: in the former, the user can edit markers and control the segmentation result; in the latter, the user can select an image partition from a nested set of partitions. We investigate and propose ways to transition from one approach to other. Such transitions can be used to integrate both approaches in such a way that allow us to make full use of the strengths of both. We present examples that illustrate the use of the proposed transitions in conjunction with several interaction possibilities from both approaches.