Global Manifold Learning for Interactive Image Segmentation

This paper presents an interactive image segmen-tation algorithm, in which the segmentation problem is formulated as a global manifold learning process. Based on the principle that the label of each element depends on the influence of all the elements in the image, we extend the conventional local neighborhood or the long range regional relationships to the global relationships over the whole image. A probabilistic framework is established to measure the global effect of each element on all other elements. Based on two different manifold learning styles, the semi-global manifold learning (SGML) and the fully-global manifold learning (FGML) algorithms are proposed to capture the global geometry structure of the data manifold. SGML learns the intrinsic effects of each element separately, equivalent to a matrix diffusion process on an affinity graph. FGML learns the intrinsic effects of all elements together, equivalent to a label pair diffusion process on a higher-order tensor product graph. The global manifold learning helps to overcome the low contrast, weak boundary and texture problems. Extensive experiments on three public interactive segmentation datasets demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed algorithms both in accuracy and efficiency.