Tensor Field Graph-Cut for Image Segmentation: A Non-Convex Perspective

Image segmentation is a key component of image analysis, which refers to the process of partitioning the image into multiple segments. Graph cut is widely used in image segmentation by constructing a graph that the minimal cut of this graph would lead to partition the corresponding pixels of the different objects. In this paper, we reconstruct the graph cut problem as a special non-convex optimization problem instead of the traditional maximum flow problem. We extend this non-convex problem to the hypergraph method and combine it with a tensor field based on a directional bilateral filter bank to achieve segmentation in grayscale images. Accordingly, an efficient minimization algorithm is proposed to solve this non-convex problem with global convergence. Furthermore, we have selected the data of BSDS300 and BSDS500 as tests. Experimental results and evaluation index tests further demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method.