Adaptive multi-scale segmentation of surface data using unsupervised learning of seed positions

This paper presents a method for multi-scale segmentation of surface data using scale-adaptive region growing. The proposed segmentation algorithm is initiated by an unsupervised learning of optimal seed positions through the surface attribute clustering with a two-criterion score function. The seeds are selected as consecutive local maxima of the clustering map, which is computed by an aggregation of the local isotropic contrast and local variance maps. The proposed method avoids typical segmentation errors caused by an inappropriate choice of seed points and thresholds used in the region-growing algorithm. The scale-adaptive threshold estimate is based on the image local statistics in the neighborhoods of seed points. The performance of this method was evaluated on LiDAR surface images.