Patent ID: 8009911

Claim:
A method for segmentation of an object from a background in an image having a plurality of pixels, comprising: on a processor, defining an energy function on a combinatorial graph, the combinatorial graph having directed edges between nodes, the energy function depending on the value of a first and a second edge weight of a directed edge, the energy function being determined by an expression E ⁡ ( x ) = ∑ e ij ∈ ɛ ⁢ [ w ij ⁢ I ⁡ ( x i ≥ x j ) + w ji ⁢ I ⁡ ( x i < x j ) ] ⁢ ( x i - x j ) 2 , wherein E(x) is an energy of a weighted graph formed by a function associated to nodes x, e ij ∈ε are edges in the weighted graph between nodes i and j, w ij is a weight of an edge e ij , I is an indicator function, and x i and x j are the values of node i and node j, respectively; creating a contour that segments the plurality of pixels into background and foreground pixels by determining a minimizer of the energy function by the processor; and generating by the processor to a display an image that contains a segmentation of the object.