Foreground/background segmentation of color images by integration of multiple cues

This research addresses the issue of automatically segmenting color images into foreground (F) and back-ground (B) regions with the assumption that background regions are relatively smooth but may have gradually varying colors or be slightly textured. A multi-level segmentation scheme is used that involves color clustering, unsupervised segmentation using MDL (minimum description length) principle, edge-based F/B separation, and integrated F/B segmentation. The approach has been tested on more than 100 images. Some of the experimental results are presented.