Effective image browsing on mobile devices: a region-based approach

Pictures have become increasingly common and popular in mobile communications. However, due to the limitation of mobile devices, it is necessary to develop new technologies to facilitate the browsing of large pictures on small displays. In this paper, we propose a novel image viewing technique based on a region-based image representation. A constrained image segmentation algorithm is introduced to efficiently split a large image into small regions with desirable properties. Based on the region-based image representation, effective image scrolling and zooming algorithms have been designed. Experimental evaluations of the proposed mechanism indicate that our approach is an effective way for viewing images on mobile devices with small screen.