Extracting regions of attention by imitating the human visual system

Detecting and segmenting out the regions of interest (ROIs) is one of the foundations in image processing and analysis. Because the final information sink of images is human, for segmenting out the ROIs effectively, we need to study human visual system (HVS) and imitate the behaviors when human viewing a scene. Researchers have found several factors which affect human attentions by studying eye movements when one views an image. In this paper, a method is proposed to detect the ROIs automatically based on HVS. In the proposed algorithm, the properties of pixels such as the contrast, location and edges are analyzed, and the pixels are enhanced according to the sensitivity of HVS. Then these factors are combined to a salient map, which classifies each pixel of the image in relation to its perceptual importance. Finally, the ROIs are segmented according to the salient map. This algorithm is easy to work, and can segment the objects from complex background efficiently.