Patent ID: 8249369

Claim:
A method of tile-based belief propagation, comprising: splitting an image into a plurality of tiles each including a plurality of pixels; iteratively generating messages within each of the tiles based on messages from neighboring pixels to the tile at a previous iteration, wherein each message represents information of a state of the pixel; storing generated messages for sending out of the tiles; and determining labels based on the stored messages, wherein each label represents the state of the pixel; wherein the messages are generated further based on a data energy term E d and a smoothness energy term E s in energy minimization on a Markov Random Field (MRF); and wherein the step of iteratively generating messages within each of the tiles is performed according to a brief propagation (BP) equation: M pq t ⁡ ( l p ) = min l ′ ∈ L ⁢ { E s ⁡ ( l q , l ′ ) + E d ⁡ ( l ′ ) + ∑ ( p , p ′ ) ∈ N p ⁢ \ ⁢ q ⁢ M p ′ ⁢ p t - 1 ⁡ ( l ′ ) } in which N p is a set of neighbors of a pixel p, M pq t is the generated message at iteration t, and M p′p t−1 is the message at the previous iteration t−1.