Grouping Contours by Iterated Pairing Network
Amnon Shashua, Shimon Ullman · 1990
We describe in this paper a network that performs grouping of image contours. The input to the net are fragments of image contours, and the output is the partitioning of the fragments into groups, together with a saliency measure for each group. The grouping is based on a measure of overall length and curvature. The network decomposes the overall optimization problem into independent optimal pairing problems performed at each node. The resulting computation maps into a uniform locally connected network of simple computing elements. 1 The Problem: Contour Grouping A problem that often arises in visual information processing is the linking of contour fragments into optimal groups. For example, certain subsets of contours spontaneously form perceptual groups, as illustrated in Fig. 1, and are often detected immediately without scanning the image in a systematic manner. Grouping process of this type are likely to play an important role in object recognition by segmenting the image and sel...