Patent ID: 7349922

Claim:
A method for processing an image comprising the steps of: I. in a first stage: a. constructing a graph of an image to be processed wherein each node of the graph represents a pixel of the image, b. determining a weight associated arc indicative of the likelihood of an edge separating said each node from each of its neighboring nodes; c. coarsening the graph by iterative weighted aggregation to construct a multilevel pyramid over the graph to obtain hierarchical decomposition of the image to reveal segments in the image wherein for the first level up of the pyramid a first smaller set of aggregates is selected from the nodes based on their weight associated arcs, and new updated weight associated arcs are determined for a member of the set relative to its neighbors, and for each further level up, still smaller sets of larger aggregates are selected from the set of aggregates of the next level down and any remaining nodes based on their weight associated arcs, and new updated weight associated arcs are determined for a member of the set relative to its neighbors; and d. detecting segments in the pyramidal structure; II. in a second stage: e. determining which nodes of the graph belong to each detected segment by determining recursively a degree of attachment of every node of the graph to each of the detected segments in the pyramid according to a first preselected parameter associated with the segments; and f. sharpening the boundaries of a segment by iteratively changing a preselected second parameter of the segment and iteratively determining until the preselected second parameter reaches an end value whereby a processed image is obtained; and g. outputting the processed image.