A Multiscale Image Segmentation Algorithm Based on Binary Partition Tree

As a necessary Stepfor interested object extraction from images,an image segmentation algorithm usually needs to provide a multiscale segmentation result. This paper proposes a binary partition tree (BPT) based multiscale image segmentation algorithm. Starting from an over-segmentation result,region merging is performed and the merging sequence is recorded by a BPT. Then each node in the BPT is measured with the difference from its parent node,and a node selecting algorithm combining automatic candidate node determination and splitting-merging scheme is proposed to select a subset of nodes,which are used to generate the segmentation result under any scale specified by the desired number of segmented regions. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can obtain better segmentation results suitable for object extraction under coarser scales,and thus improves the segmentation efficiency in automatic object extraction and reduces the user interaction activities in interactive object extraction.