Hierarchical semiautomatic video object segmentation for multimedia applications
Saman H. Cooray, Noel Edward O'Connor, Seán Marlow, Noel A. Murphy, Thomas P. Curran · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2001
In this paper, an efficient tool to extract video objects from video sequences is presented. With this tool, it is possible to segment video content in a user-friendly manner to provide easy manipulation of video content. The tool is comprised of two stages. Firstly, the initial object extraction is performed using the Recursive Shortest Spanning Tree (RSST) algorithm and the Binary Partition Tree (BPT) technique. Secondly, automatic object tracking is performed using a single frame forward region tracking method. In the first stage, an initial partition is created using the RSST algorithm which allows the user to specify the initial number of regions. This process is followed by progressive binary merging of these regions to create the BPT. The purpose of creating the BPT is to allow the user to browse the content of the scene in a hierarchical manner. This merging step creates the binary tree with nearly double the user-specified number of homogenous regions. User interaction then allows grouping particular regions into objects. In the second stage, each subsequent frame is segmented using the RSST and corresponding regions are identified using a forward region tracking method.