Use of Texture Operators in Segmentation

In this paper we consider the analysis of complex scenes such as commonly appear in aerial scenes of urban areas. In developing a computer vision system for these scenes we have had to address several problem areas. The first problem area is to structure a vision system so that all possible information is utilized in the analysis of the scene. Examples are spatial and hierarchical relationships that can occur in the scenes. Another problem is to develop operators that can interrogate the scene data and derive useful information about the presence of objects that may appear in the scene. When one considers the great variety of patterns that may occur in aerial scenes, it is apparent that this is a formidable problem. It seems unlikely that traditional methods of edge detection or spectral classification will suffice. It is impera-tive that one have appropriate operators since no vision system will perform properly without relevant information returned from the image data. Another problem area is devising methods for integrating the information returned from the operators to obtain the best possible interpretation of the scene. In this paper we discuss our work on the first two of these problems.