Efficient MRF Energy Propagation for Video Segmentation via Bilateral Filters

TL;DR

This paper introduces an efficient method for video object segmentation by propagating MRF energies using bilateral filters, enabling near real-time performance without sacrificing segmentation quality.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel approach to propagate MRF energies in video segmentation using bilateral filters and a dynamic graph-cut solution, improving efficiency without quality loss.

Findings

Achieves significant time efficiency in video segmentation

Maintains high segmentation quality in challenging scenarios

Applicable to both automatic and interactive segmentation

Abstract

Segmentation of an object from a video is a challenging task in multimedia applications. Depending on the application, automatic or interactive methods are desired; however, regardless of the application type, efficient computation of video object segmentation is crucial for time-critical applications; specifically, mobile and interactive applications require near real-time efficiencies. In this paper, we address the problem of video segmentation from the perspective of efficiency. We initially redefine the problem of video object segmentation as the propagation of MRF energies along the temporal domain. For this purpose, a novel and efficient method is proposed to propagate MRF energies throughout the frames via bilateral filters without using any global texture, color or shape model. Recently presented bi-exponential filter is utilized for efficiency, whereas a novel technique is also developed to dynamically solve graph-cuts for varying, non-lattice graphs in general linear filtering scenario. These improvements are experimented for both automatic and interactive video segmentation scenarios. Moreover, in addition to the efficiency, segmentation quality is also tested both quantitatively and qualitatively. Indeed, for some challenging examples, significant time efficiency is observed without loss of segmentation quality.