Detection of Colour Channels Uncoupling for Curvature-Insensitive Segmentation

A segmentation method based on a physics-based model of image formation is presented in this paper. This model predicts that, in image areas of uniform reflectance, colour channels keep coupled in the sense that they are not free to take any intensity value, but they depend on the values taken by other colour channels. This coupling property is, however, broken at reflectance transition locations. Surface material changes (i.e. reflectance changes) can, thus, be found by looking for violations of the coupling properties. If edges are defined at points breaking the coupling and connected image areas not including edges are found, the set of resultant regions are guaranteed not to contain a material change. If, besides, edges are added to the most similar adjacent region, a first partition of the image can be obtained. Finally, a merging stage is executed to remove the probably low degree of oversegmentation which can result.