Image Segmentation and Compression Using Hidden Markov Models

In an age of information technology, the issues of distributing and utilizing images efficiently and effectively are of substantial concern. Solutions to many of the problems arising from these issues are provided by techniques of image processing. Two of these, segmentation and compression, are discussed in this book. The authors present an algorithm that models the statistical dependence among image blocks by two dimensional hidden Markov models (HMMs). Formulas for estimating the model according to the maximum likelihood criterion are derived from the EM algorithm. To segment an image, optimal classes are searched jointly for all the blocks by the maximum a posteriori (MAP) rule. The 2-D HMM is extended to multiresolution so that more context information is exploited in classification and fast progressive segmentation schemes can be formed naturally. The second issue addressed in the book is the design of joint compression and classification systems using the 2-D HMM and vector quantization.