FLIC: Fast linear iterative clustering with active search

In this paper, we reconsider the clustering problem for image over-segmentation from a new perspective. We propose a novel search algorithm called “active search” which explicitly considers neighbor continuity. Based on this search method, we design a back-and-forth traversal strategy and a joint assignment and update step to speed up the algorithm. Compared to earlier methods, such as simple linear iterative clustering (SLIC) and its variants, which use fixed search regions and perform the assignment and the update steps separately, our novel scheme reduces the number of iterations required for convergence, and also provides better boundaries in the over-segmentation results. Extensive evaluation using the Berkeley segmentation benchmark verifies that our method outperforms competing methods under various evaluation metrics. In particular, our method is fastest, achieving approximately 30 fps for a 481 × 321 image on a single CPU core. To facilitate further research, our code is made publicly available.