Mixed Texture Composition: Determining the Proportion of Structured and Statistical Components

How should one model a texture? Statistically? Structurally? Or a bit of both? In this paper, we propose a method to help one decide. We assume a texture contains a random and a structured component, then estimate the proportion of energy in each component using a new algorithm. The energy proportions indicate whether one texture component dominates or an even mix exists. We implemented our algorithm on known texture mixtures and obtained energy proportion estimates that were accurate to ±0.003. This compares well to raw estimates made using an established method. We also estimated the proportions of random and structured components in natural textures taken from a public database. We were able to order the 2D textures in a perceptually-reasonably way using the estimated energy proportion of the structured component. Unfortunately the new algorithm showed signs of being directionally biased and not invariant to non-uniform lighting conditions across a texture. Thus further development is required.