Hierarchical Description of Textures

A system is proposed which analyzes various textures statistically or structurally, depending on the nature of the textures. The system first describes a texture globally by both gray level first order statistics and edge statistics to roughly classify it. Next, the system extracts homogeneous gray level regions to try to describe the texture structurally. However, if too many regions are extracted or if regions cannot be easily extracted, this indicates the existence of micro-textures. In such a case, the system extract regions based on local gray level first order statistics and local edge statistics. Then figure regions are distinguished from ground regions and are decomposed into atomic texture elements of simple shape. The system then describes the structure of the atomic texture elements. If there are locally ordered texture elements, they are grouped into subpatterns and their structure are described. This process results in a hierarchical description of the texture.