Fast unsupervised texture segmentation using Texel similarity map

Unsupervised texture segmentation is a challenging topic in computer vision. It is difficult to obtain boundaries of texture regions automatically in real-time, especially for cluttered images. This paper presents a new fast unsupervised texture segmentation method. First, the Texel similarity map (TSM) is used to compare the changes of intensity and gray level of neighboring pixels to determine whether they are identical. Then, a scheme called multiple directions integral images (MDII) is proposed to quickly evaluate the TSM. With the aid of MDII, one pixel’s similarity value can be computed in constant time. Finally, the proposed segmentation method is tested on both artificial texture and natural images. Experimental results show that the proposed method performs well on a wide range of images, and outperforms state-of-the-art method on segmentation speed.