IMAGE SEGMENTATION BASED ON COMPOSITE RANDOM FIELD MODELS

The problem of region segmentation is examined and a new algorithm for maximum a posteriori (MAP) segmentation is introduced. The observed image is modeled as a composite of two processes: a high-level process that describes the various regions in the images and a low-level process that describes each particular region. A Gibbs-Markov random field model is used to describe the high-level process and a simultaneous autoregressive random field model is used to describe the low-level process. The MAP segmentation algorithm is formulated from the two models and a recursive implementation for the algorithm is presented. Results of the algorithm on various synthetic and natural textures clearly indicate the effectiveness of the approach to texture segmentation.