Automated Resolution Selection for Image Segmentation

It is well-known in image processing that computational cost increases rapidly with the number and dimensions of the images to be processed. Several fields, such as medical imaging, routinely use numerous very large images, which might also be 3D and/or captured at several frequency bands, all adding to the computational expense. Multiresolution analysis is a method of increasing the efficiency of the segmentation process. One multiresolution approach is the coarse-to-fine segmentation strategy, whereby the segmentation starts at a coarse resolution and is then fine-tuned during subsequent steps. The starting resolution for segmentation is generally selected arbitrarily with no clear selection criteria. The research reported in this paper showed that starting from different resolutions for image segmentation results in different accuracies and computational times, even for images of the same category (depicting similar scenes or objects). An automated method for resolution selection for an input image would thus be beneficial. This paper introduces a framework for the automated selection of the best resolution for image segmentation. We propose a measure for defining the best resolution based on user/system criteria, offering a trade-off between accuracy and computation time. A learning approach is then introduced for the selection of the resolution, whereby extracted image features are mapped to the previously determined best resolution. In the learning process, class (i.e., resolution) distribution is generally imbalanced, making effective learning from the data difficult. Experiments conducted with three datasets using two different segmentation algorithms show that the resolutions selected through learning enable much faster segmentation than the original ones, while retaining at least the original accuracy.