Automatic foreground extraction by background elimination based on multiscale segmentation

Abstract

We propose an approach to automatically extracting foreground regions. This is a novel method for segmenting salient objects from still images by background elimination. To extract foreground regions, a new method of background elimination based on multiscale segmentation is proposed to detect candidate object regions. To this end, we use a trimap consisting of foreground, background, and undefined regions and a region adjacency graph. A graph-cut technique is finally used to extract exact foreground regions from the candidates. Experimental results have shown that the proposed method yields a better foreground extraction than Kim's method under various environments containing multiple objects and clutter backgrounds in natural images.