Process to extract regions of homogeneous texture in a digital picture

Abstract

A method of extracting regions of homogeneous texture in a digital picture divides the digital picture into blocks, and for each block generates a feature vector as a function of the data moments. From the feature vectors a gradient for each block is extracted in one of two ways, either using a weighted Euclidean distance between the feature vectors or a probability mass function-based distance metric. The gradients are submitted to morphological preprocessing to remove small bumps in the gradient field. A watershed algorithm is then applied to the preprocessed gradient field to segment the gradient field into a set of spatially connected regions of homogeneous texture.