A Compact and Multiscale Image Model Based on Level Sets

Multiscale segmentation respectful of the visual perception is an important issue of Computer Vision. We present an image model derived from the level sets representation which offers most of the prop- erties sought to a good segmentation: the borders are located at the per- ceptual edges; they are invariant by affine map and by contrast change; they are sorted according to their perceptual significance using a scale parameter. At last, a compact version of this model has been developed to be used in a progressive, and artifact-free, image compression scheme.