Optimality Bounds for a Variational Relaxation of the Image Partitioning Problem

Variational relaxations can be used to compute approximate minimizers of optimal partitioning and multiclass labeling problems on continuous domains. While the resulting relaxed convex problem can be solved globally optimal, in order to obtain a discrete solution a rounding step is required, which may increase the objective and lead to suboptimal solutions. We analyze a probabilistic rounding method and prove that it allows to obtain discrete solutions with an a priori upper bound on the objective, ensuring the quality of the result from the viewpoint of optimization. We show that the approach can be interpreted as an approximate, multiclass variant of the coarea formula.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2011
• Where: EMMCVPR
• Authors: Jan Lellmann, Frank Lenzen, Christoph Schnörr
• Keywords: Computer Vision, Continuous Domains, Discrete Solution, Discrete Solutions, EMMCVPR 2011