Visual Saliency from Image Features with Application to Compression

Image feature point algorithms and their associated regional descriptors can be viewed as primitive detectors of visually salient information. In this paper, a new method for constructing a visual attention probability map using features is proposed. (Throughout this work, we use SURF features yet the algorithm is not limited to SURF alone.). This technique is validated using comprehensive human eye-tracking experiments. We call this algorithm “visual interest” (VI) since the resultant segmentation reveals image regions that are visually salient during the performance of multiple observer search tasks. We demonstrate that it works on generic, eye-level photographs and is not dependent on heuristic tuning. We further show that the descriptor-matching property of the SURF feature points can be exploited via object recognition to modulate the context of the attention probability map for a given object search task, refining the salient area. We fully validate the VI algorithm through applying it to salient compression using a pre-blur of non-salient regions prior to JPEG and conducting comprehensive observer performance tests. When using the object contextualisation, we conclude that JPEG files are around 33 % larger than they need to be to fully represent the task-relevant information within them. We finally demonstrate the utility of the segmentation as a region of interest in JPEG2000 compression to achieve superior image quality (measured statistically using PSNR and SSIM) over the automatically selected salient image regions while reducing the image filesize by down to 25 % of that of the original. Our technique therefore delivers superior compression performance through the detection and selective preservation of visually salient information relevant to multiple observer tasks. In contrast to the state of the art in task-directed visual attention models, the VI algorithm reacts only to the image content and requires no detailed prior knowledge of the scene nor of the ultimate observer task.