Nonlocal Variational Model for Saliency Detection

We present a nonlocal variational model for saliency detection from still images, from which various features for visual attention can be detected by minimizing the energy functional. The associated Euler-Lagrange equation is a nonlocal p-Laplacian type diffusion equation with two reaction terms, and it is a nonlinear diffusion. The main advantage of our method is that it provides flexible and intuitive control over the detecting procedure by the temporal evolution of the Euler-Lagrange equation. Experimental results on various images show that our model can better make background details diminish eventually while luxuriant subtle details in foreground are preserved very well.