Hierarchical segmentation of complex structures

We present an unsupervised hierarchical segmentation algorithm for detection of complex heterogeneous image structures that are comprised of simpler homogeneous primitive objects. An initial segmentation step produces regions corresponding to primitive objects with uniform spectral content. Next, the transitions between neighboring regions are modeled and clustered. We assume that the clusters that are dense and large enough in this transition space can be considered as significant. Then, the neighboring regions belonging to the significant clusters are merged to obtain the next level in the hierarchy. The experiments show that the algorithm that iteratively clusters and merges region groups is able to segment high-level complex structures in a hierarchical manner. © 2010 IEEE.