AN ALGORITHM FOR GROWING 4-CONNECTED CORES IN IMAGE SEGMENTATION

摘要

The present invention relates to a method and device (20) for labeling segments of an image containing a plurality of pixels. A pre-labeling stage (22) serves to ascertain whether a current pixel is 4-connected to two pixels previously labeled with labels differing from each other, and to generate for each such 4-connected pixel an equivalence entry to an equivalence list. Furthermore, each current pixel, which is 4-connected to at least one previously processed pixel on the current homogeneity threshold level is assigned the label of a previously processed neighbor pixel, to which the current pixel is 4-connected and which has a predetermined neighboring position relative to the current pixel. Maintenance of an equivalence list instead of an equivalence table accelerates the pre-labeling stage. The maintenance of the equivalence list is optimized by an equivalence-maintenance stage (28), which ascertains whether a newly received equivalence entry is identical to the equivalence entry that was last stored in the equivalence list, and stores only a newly received equivalence entry, which is different from the equivalence entry last stored in the equivalence list.