Patent Document ID: 20100104186
Application ID: 12558649
Patent Status: 0

Claim One:
1. A computer implemented method for segmenting a digital image, the method performed by the computer comprising the steps of: initializing object and background seed nodes in an image, wherein the image is represented as a graph G=(V, E) whose nodes iεV correspond to image points and whose edges eεE connect adjacent points, wherein set M⊂V contains locations of nodes marked as seeds, set U⊂V contains locations of unmarked nodes, set O⊂M contains locations of object seed nodes, and set B⊂M contains locations of background seed nodes; assigning to each seed node a membership value such that ∀iεO, x i =1 and ∀iεB, x i =0, wherein each node iεV is associated with a membership x i ε[0,1; and finding a membership vector xε , whose i th entry is given by x i that minimizes E p ( x ) = ∑ eij ∈ E w ij  x i - x j  pij , wherein each edge e ij εE connecting nodes i and j in V is associated with a weight w ij and an exponent p ij , and ∀e ij εE,1≦p ij <∞ such that x i =1 if iεO and x i =0 if iεB.