Volumetric bias in segmentation and reconstruction : Secrets and solutions

• Many standard optimization methods for segmentation and reconstruction compute ML model estimates for ap- pearance or geometry of segments, e.g. Zhu-Yuille [23], Torr [20], Chan-Vese [6], GrabCut [18], Delong et al. [8]. We observe that the standard likelihood term in these formu- lations corresponds to a generalized probabilistic K-means energy. In learning it is well known that this energy has a strong bias to clusters of equal size [11], which we express as a penalty for KL divergence from a uniform distribution of cardinalities. However, this volumetric bias has been mostly ignored in computer vision. We demonstrate signif- icant artifacts in standard segmentation and reconstruction methods due to this bias. Moreover, we propose binary and multi-label optimization techniques that either (a) remove this bias or (b) replace it by a KL divergence term for any given target volume distribution. Our general ideas apply to continuous or discrete energy formulations in segmenta- tion, stereo, and other reconstruction problems.

Subject headings

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Data- och informationsvetenskap -- Datorseende och robotik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Computer and Information Sciences -- Computer Vision and Robotics (hsv//eng)

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