Digital Signal Processing Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 1
Image/Video Segmentation: Current Status,
Trends, and Challenges
Hongliang Li and King Ngi Ngan
Abstract
Segmentation plays an important role in digital media processing,
pattern recognition, and computer vision. The task of image/video segmentation
emerges in many application areas, such as image interpretation, video analysis
and understanding, video summarization and indexing, and digital entertainment.
Over the last two decades, the problem of segmenting image/video data has become
a fundamental one and had significant impact on both new pattern recognition
algorithms and applications.
This chapter has several objectives: (1) to survey the current status of research
activities including graph-based, density estimator-based, and temporal-based seg-
mentation algorithms. (2) To discuss recent developments while providing a com-
prehensive introduction to the fields of image/video segmentation. (3) To identify
challenges ahead, and outline perspectives for the years to come.
1.1
Introduction
We often hear the old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words”, which means a
complex semantic information can be conveyed with just a single still picture. Have
you ever wondered when you look at a picture, how do your eyes find the interest-
ing target from the scene and how do your brain understand the scene? How many
activities are involved in the scene recognition progress? The possible answer may
lie in the semantic content processing, which can provide us with the meaningful
cues for the scene understanding [
1
].
From the content-related services, a semantic object (i.e., meaningful entity in-
cluding a collection of attributes) can be detected and exploited to provide the user
with the flexibility of content-based access and manipulation, such as fast indexing
from video databases, advanced editing and composition, and efficient coding of
H. Li (
)
School of Electronic Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology
of China, Chengdu, China
e-mail:
hlli@uestc.edu.cn
