A label error process for discrete relaxation

A novel concept is introduced which involves the use of a label error process in conjunction with iterative discrete relaxation procedures. This idea allows the discrete relaxation procedure to draw on knowledge of constraints in the form of a dictionary of consistent labelings. According to this representation, nonphysical labelings are illegal and are not admitted. It is the legalization of nonphysical labelings that degrades the capacity of the label process to model consistency. The deadlock problem which results from the need to estimate the probability of nonphysical labelings is overcome by drawing on the idea of label corruption. Under certain nonrestrictive assumptions. the label corrupting process can be modeled by a binomial distribution of label errors. The number of such errors can be measured by the congruency between dictionary items and inconsistent labelings. Under the assumption of small label error probability, a model of the label error process has been demonstrated that can be realized efficiently by table lookup. The realization of the new methodology has been demonstrated for an edge-labeling application