A distributed and collective approach for curved object-based range image segmentation

Abstract

In this paper, we use multi-agent paradigm in order to propose a new method of image segmentation. The images considered in this work are the range images which can contain at once polyhedral and curved objects. The proposed method uses a multi-agent approach where agents align the region borders to the surrounding surfaces which make emerging a collective segmentation of the image. The agents move on the image and when they arrive on the pixels of a region border they align these pixels to their respective surfaces. The resulting competitive alignment allows at once the emergence of the image edges and the disappearance of the noise regions. The test results obtained with real images show a good potential of the new method for accurate image segmentation. © 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.