Object scale selection of hierarchical image segmentation with deep seeds

Abstract Hierarchical image segmentation is a prevalent technique in the literature for improving segmentation quality, where the segmentation result needs to be searched at different scales of the hierarchy to identify objects represented from various scales. In this paper, a novel framework for improving the quality of object segmentation is presented. To this end, the authors first select the optimal segments among several hierarchical scales of the input image using simple mid‐level features and dynamic programming. Simultaneously, deep seeds are localised on the input image for the foreground and background classes using a deep classification network and a saliency network, respectively. Then, a graphical model is constructed as a set of nodes that jointly propagate information from deep seeds to unmarked regions to obtain the final object segmentation. Comprehensive experiments are performed on different datasets for popular hierarchical image segmentation algorithms. The experimental results show that the proposed framework can significantly improve the quality of object segmentation at low computational costs and without training any segmentation network