Hierarchical Image Segmentation Using Contrast Difference of Neighbor Regions for Very Low Bit Rate Coding

초저속 전송을 위한 영역간의 대조 차를 이용한 계층적 영상 분할

In this paper, a new image segmentation method based on merging of two low contrast neighbor regions iteratively is proposed. It is suitable for very low bit rate coding. The proposed method reduces efficiently contour information and preserves subjective and objective image quality. It consists of image segmentation using 4-level hierarchical structure based on mathematical morphology and 1-level region merging structure using the contrast difference of two adjacent neighbor regions. For each segmented region of the third level, two adjacent neighbor regions having low contrast difference value in fourth level based on contrast difference value is merged iteratively. It preserves image quality and shows the noticeable reduction of the contour information, so that it can improve the bottleneck problem of segmentation-based coding at very low bit rate.