Block-Based Predictive Watershed Transform for Parallel Video Segmentation

Predictive watershed transform is a popular object segmentation algorithm which achieves a speed-up by identifying image regions that are different from the previous frame and performing object segmentation only for those regions. However, incorrect segmentation is often generated by the predictive watershed transform which uses only local information in merge-split decision on boundary regions. This paper improves the predictive watershed transform to increase the accuracy of segmentation results by using the additional information about the root of boundary regions. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm is processed in a block-based manner such that an image frame is decomposed into blocks and each block is processed independently of the other blocks. The block-based approach makes it easy to implement the algorithm in hardware and also permits an extension for parallel execution. Experimental results show that the proposed watershed transform produces more accurate segmentation results than the predictive watershed transform.