Segmentation and Estimation of Image Region Properties through Cooperative Hierarchial Computation

The task of segmenting an image and that of estimating properties of image regions may be highly interdependent. The goal of segmentation is to partition the image into regions with more or less homogeneous properties; but the processes which estimate these properties should be confined within individual regions. A cooperative, iterative approach to segmentation and property estimation is defined; the results of each process at a given iteration are used to adjust the other process at the next iteration. A linked pyramid structure provides a framework for this process iteration. This hierarchical structure ensures rapid convergence even with strictly local communication between pyramid nodes.