Image segmentation by data driven Markov chain Monte Carlo

This paper presents a computational paradigm called Data Driven Markov Chain Monte Carlo (DDMCMC) for image segmentation in the Bayesian, statistical framework. The paper contributes to image segmentation in three aspects. Firstly, it designs effective and well balanced Markov Chain dynamics to explore the solution space and makes the split and merge process reversible at a middle level vision formulation. Thus it achieves globally optimal solution independent of initial segmentations. Secondly, instead of computing a single maximum a posteriori solution, it proposes a mathematical principle for computing multiple distinct solutions to incorporates intrinsic ambiguities in image segmentation. A k-adventurers algorithm is proposed for extracting distinct multiple solutions from the Markov chain sequence. Thirdly, it utilizes data-driven (bottom-up) techniques, such as clustering and edge detection, to compute importance proposal probabilities, which effectively drive the Markov chain dynamics and achieve tremendous speedup in comparison to traditional jump-diffusion method. Thus DDM-CMC paradigm provides a unifying framework where the role of existing segmentation algorithms, such as; edge detection, clustering, region growing, split-merge, SNAKEs, region competition, are revealed as either realizing Markov chain dynamics or computing importance proposal probabilities. We report some results on color and grey level image segmentation in this paper and refer to a detailed report and a web site for extensive discussion.