Image segmentation and object extraction based on geometric features of regions

We propose a method for segmenting a color image into object-regions each of which corresponds to the projected region of each object in the scene onto an image plane. In coventional segmentation methods, it is not easy to extract an object-region as one region. Our proposed method uses geometric features of regions. At first, the image is segmented into small regions. Next, the geometric features such as inclusion, area ratio, smoothness, and continuity, are calculated for each region. Then the regions are merged together based on the geometric features. This merging enables us to obtain an object-region even if the surface of the object is textured with a variety of reflectances; this isn't taken into account in conventional segmentation methods. We show experimental results demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed method.