Oversegmentation reduction via multiresolution image representation

We introduce a method to reduce oversegmentation in watershed partitioned images, that is based on the use of a multiresolution representation of the input image. The underlying idea is that the most significant components perceived in the highest resolution image will remain identifiable also at lower resolution. Thus, starting from the image at the highest resolution, we first obtain a multiresolution representation by building a resolution pyramid. Then, we identify the seeds for watershed segmentation on the lower resolution pyramid levels and suitably use them to identify the significant seeds in the highest resolution image. This is finally partitioned by watershed segmentation, providing a satisfactory result. Since different lower resolution levels can be used to identify the seeds, we obtain alternative segmentations of the highest resolution image, so that the user can select the preferred level of detail.