Multiple Contour Finding and Perceptual Grouping using Minimal Paths

We address the problem of finding a set of contour curves in an image. We consider the problem of perceptual grouping and contour completion, where the data is a set of points in the image. A new method to find complete curves from a set of contours or edge points is presented. Our approach is based on a previous work on finding contours as minimal paths between two end points using the fast marching algorithm (L. D Cohen and R. Kimmel, International Journal of Computer Vision, Vol. 24, No. 1, pp. 57–78, 1997). Given a set of key points, we find the pairs of points that have to be linked and the paths that join them. We use the saddle points of the minimal action map. The paths are obtained by backpropagation from the saddle points to both points of each pair.