The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Aug. 21, 2012
Filed:
Nov. 25, 2008
Andrew Blake, Cambridge, GB;
Carsten Rother, Cambridge, GB;
Victor Lempitsky, Redmond, WA (US);
Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA (US);
Abstract
An image processing system is described which automatically labels image elements of a digital image. In an embodiment an energy function describing the quality of possible labelings of an image is globally optimized to find an output labeled image. In the embodiment, the energy function comprises terms that depend on at least one non-local parameter. For example, the non-local parameter describes characteristics of image elements having the same label. In an embodiment the global optimization is achieved in a practical, efficient manner by using a tree structure to represent candidate values of the non-local parameter and by using a branch and bound process. In some embodiments, the branch and bound process comprises evaluating a lower bound of the energy function by using a min-cut process. For example, the min-cut process enables the lower bound to be evaluated efficiently using a graphical data structure to represent the lower bound.