Segmenting simply connected moving objects in a static scene

A new segmentation algorithm is derived, based on an object-background probability estimate exploiting the experimental fact that the statistics of local image derivatives show a Laplacian distribution. The objects' simple connectedness is included directly into the probability estimate and leads to an iterative optimization approach that can be implemented efficiently. This new approach avoids early thresholding, explicit edge detection, motion analysis, and grouping.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">></ETX>