Analysis of multichannel narrow-band filters for image texture segmentation

A model for texture analysis and segmentation using multiple oriented channel filters is analyzed in the general framework. Several different arguments are applied leading to the conclusion that the two-dimensional Gabor filters possess strong optimality properties for this task. Properties of the multiple-channel segmentation approach are analyzed. In particular, perturbations of textures from an ideal model are found to have important effects on the segmentation that can usually be ameliorated by simply preceding the segmentation process by a logarithmic operation and using a low-pass postfilter prior to making region assignments. The difficult problems of space-variant textures and multiple component textures are also considered. Local spatial frequency estimation approaches are suggested that use the responses as constraints in estimating the locally emergent texture frequencies. Complex texture aggregates containing multiple shared frequency components can be analyzed if the textures are distinct and few in number. >