Separating Transparent Layers through Layer Information Exchange

In this paper we present an approach for separating two transparent layers in images and video sequences. Given two initial unknown physical mixtures, I1 and I2, of real scene layers, L1 and L2, we seek a layer separation which minimizes the structural correlations across the two layers, at every image point. Such a separation is achieved by transferring local grayscale structure from one image to the other wherever it is highly correlated with the underlying local grayscale structure in the other image, and vice versa. This bi-directional transfer operation, which we call the "layer information exchange", is performed on diminishing window sizes, from global image windows (i.e., the entire image), down to local image windows, thus detecting similar grayscale structures at varying scales across pixels. We show the applicability of this approach to various real-world scenarios, including image and video transparency separation. In particular, we show that this approach can be ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: ECCV
• Authors: Bernard Sarel, Michal Irani
• Keywords: Complex Non-rigid Transparent, Computer Vision, ECCV 2004, Local Grayscale Structure, Real Scene Layers, Transparent Layers, Unknown Varying Lighting