Patent Document ID: 20100128984
Application ID: 12323355
Patent Flag: 0

Claim One:
1. A method of automatically processing a digital image comprising the steps of: accessing the digital image, the image comprising a plurality of image elements each to be labeled with one of two labels; storing an energy function in memory, the energy function describing the quality of possible labelings of the image elements, and the energy function comprising terms dependent on at least one parameter which is non-local with respect to the image; accessing possible values of the parameter; applying the energy function to both the digital image and possible values of the parameter, and globally optimizing the energy function to find an output labeling of the image and an output value of the parameter; wherein the process of globally optimizing the energy function comprises using a branch-and-bound search which comprises computing a lower bound of the energy function using a min-cut process; storing a labeled image corresponding to the output labeling of the image.