A novel rigid object segmentation method based on multiresolution 3-D motion and luminance analysis

In this paper, we present a new image sequence segmentation method which combines both spatial and temporal information in a multiresolution framework. A region growing technique in a multiresolution scheme outputs an over-segmented partition of the image scene. Pure temporal information is collected for each region using a feature extraction/feature tracking technique. Motion information is further processed in a pyramidal robust motion estimation scheme, in order to calculate more complex motion parameters for each region. Regions obtained from the first step are clustered according to their motion models. This ensures that rigid objects with luminance discontinuities can be segmented correctly. The method has been succesfully tested in real imagery and typical examples are presented in this paper.