Bisection approach for pixel labelling problem

This paper formulates pixel labelling as a series of two-category classification. Unlike existing techniques, which assign a determinate label to each pixel, we assign a label set to each pixel and shrink the label set step by step. Determinate labelling is achieved within log2n (n is size of label set) steps. In each step, we bisect the label set into two subsets and discard the one with higher cost of assigning it to the pixel. Simultaneous labelling of an image is carried out by minimizing an energy function that can be minimized via graph cut algorithm. Based on the bisection approach, we propose a bitwise algorithm for pixel labelling, which set one bit of each pixel’s label in each step. We apply the proposed algorithm to stereo matching and image restoration. Experimental results demonstrate that both good performance and high efficiency are achieved. & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.