Robust interactive multi-label segmentation with an advanced edge detector

Abstract: Recent advances on convex relaxation methods allow for a flexible formulation of many interactive multi-label segmentation methods. The building blocks are a likelihood specified for each pixel and each label, and a penalty for the boundary length of each segment. While many sophisticated likelihood estimations based on various statistical measures have been investigated, the boundary length is usually measured in a metric induced by simple image gradients. We show that complementing these methods with recent advances of edge detectors yields an immense quality improvement. A remarkable feature of the proposed method is the ability to correct some erroneous labels, when computer generated initial labels are considered. This allows us to improve state-of-the-art methods for motion segmentation in videos by 5-10% with respect to the F-measure (Dice score).