Interactive analysis of hierarchical image segmentation

At IGARSS'98 the authors described segmentation approach based on region growing and spectral clustering. This approach produces a hierarchical set of image segmentations in which the regions may consist of non-spatially connected objects. The authors describe a "Region Labeling Tool" that can be used produce customized image labelings. They demonstrate the Region Labeling Tool in a land cover analysis of a Landsat TM data set over the Baltimore, MD and Washington, DC area. They have seen that a key benefit of using the Region Labeling Tool with hierarchical segmentations is that a much fuller utilization of the spectral and spatial information content of imagery is obtained than possible with most other analysis techniques.