General Search Algorithms for Energy Minimization Problems

We describe a scheme for solving Energy Minimization problems, which is based on the A∗ algorithm accomplished with appropriately chosen LP-relaxations as heuristic functions. The proposed scheme is quite general and therefore can not be applied directly for real computer vision tasks. It is rather a framework, which allows to study some properties of Energy Minimization tasks and related LP-relaxations. However, it is possible to simplify it in such a way, that it can be used as a stop criterion for LP based iterative algorithms. Its main advantage is that it is exact – i.e. it never produces a discrete solution that is not globally optimal. In practice it is often able to find the optimal discrete solution even if the used LP-solver does not reach the global optimum of the corresponding LP-relaxation. Consequently, for many Energy Minimization problems it is not necessary to solve the corresponding LP-relaxations exactly.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: EMMCVPR
• Authors: Dmitrij Schlesinger
• Keywords: Computer Vision, EMMCVPR 2009, Energy Minimization, Energy Minimization Problems, Energy Minimization Tasks