Interactive max-tree visualization tool for image processing and analysis

The max-tree is a data structure that represents all possible upper thresholds of an image, it has been successfully used in many image processing and analysis applications. The max-tree corresponding to a natural image usually has thousands of nodes, which makes unpractical to build a comprehensive graphical representation of its complete structure. In this paper, we propose a methodology that allows to build an interactive max-tree graphical representation that permits the user to navigate through the max-tree nodes, to visualize its connected components and to create node subsets. Our representation displays a simplified max-tree, but it allows the user to access all max-tree nodes using the interactive features. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that proposes an interactive graphical representation of the max-tree. We depict the potential of our max-tree visualization tool for interactive segmentation, connected filtering, and collection of training samples.