Correlated Percolation, Fractal Structures, and Scale-Invariant Distribution of Clusters in Natural Images

IEEE Trans Pattern Anal Mach Intell. 2016 May;38(5):1016-20. doi: 10.1109/TPAMI.2015.2481402. Epub 2015 Sep 23.

Abstract

Natural images are scale invariant with structures at all length scales.We formulated a geometric view of scale invariance in natural images using percolation theory, which describes the behavior of connected clusters on graphs.We map images to the percolation model by defining clusters on a binary representation for images. We show that critical percolating structures emerge in natural images and study their scaling properties by identifying fractal dimensions and exponents for the scale-invariant distributions of clusters. This formulation leads to a method for identifying clusters in images from underlying structures as a starting point for image segmentation.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Cluster Analysis
  • Fractals*
  • Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / methods*
  • Models, Statistical*