Segmentation of range and intensity image sequences by clustering

Presents a method for segmenting temporal sequences of range and intensity images. The paper addresses two problems: fusion of intensity and range data for image segmentation, and visual tracking of segments over time. Our method is based on clustering in a 4D feature space which contains intensity and geometric features. The problem of tracking segments over time is solved by adaptive image sequence clustering. The main idea is to use the cluster centers of the previous image to initialize clustering for the current image. This link between consecutive clustering steps allows one to track clusters over time without explicit correspondence analysis. First experiments show that our method can successfully segment and track objects independent of their shapes and motions.

[1]  J. MacQueen Some methods for classification and analysis of multivariate observations , 1967 .

[2]  N.R. Malik,et al.  Graph theory with applications to engineering and computer science , 1975, Proceedings of the IEEE.

[3]  Steven W. Zucker,et al.  Region growing: Childhood and adolescence* , 1976 .

[4]  Theodosios Pavlidis,et al.  Picture Segmentation by a Tree Traversal Algorithm , 1976, JACM.

[5]  Robert M. Gray,et al.  An Algorithm for Vector Quantizer Design , 1980, IEEE Trans. Commun..

[6]  Yaakov Bar-Shalom,et al.  Estimation and Tracking: Principles, Techniques, and Software , 1993 .

[7]  Ulrich Kressel,et al.  Tracking non-rigid, moving objects based on color cluster flow , 1997, Proceedings of IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition.

[8]  Horst Bunke,et al.  Extraction and tracking of surfaces in range image sequences , 1999, Second International Conference on 3-D Digital Imaging and Modeling (Cat. No.PR00062).