Anisotropic diffusion is a powerful method for image feature extraction in which blurring is allowed to occur except at edges. Mean field annealing (MFA) is an image optimization technique which is used to find the best estimation of a blurred, noisy corrupted image. In this paper, we will show that MFA is versatile enough to be used for image feature extraction as well. Furthermore, the two major problems in anisotropic diffusion (white noise and geometric interpretation) can be solved by few modifications of the MFA equation. Finally, experiments and results will be presented.
Hairong Qi, Wesley E. Snyder, Griff L. Bilbro