Rapid Texture Identification

A method is presented for classifying each pixel of a textured image, and thus for segmenting the scene. The "texture energy" approach requires only a few convolutions with small (typically 5x5) integer coefficient masks, followed by a moving-window absolute average operation. Normalization by the local mean and standard deviation eliminates the need for histogram equalization. Rotation-invariance can also be achieved by using averages of the texture energy features. The convolution masks are separable, and can be implemented with 1-dimensional (vertical and horizontal) or multipass 3x3 convolutions. Special techniques permit rapid processing on general-purpose digital computers.