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A novel image matting method using sparse manual clicks

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Abstract

Traditional image matting methods often have strict requirements on user input. This paper proposes a new matting method based on spectral clustering, which generates a well matte using a sparse user input. Firstly, connected components are obtained using spectral clustering, which actually utilizes a linear transformation of the smallest eigenvectors of the matting Laplacian matrix. An accurate trimap is obtained via user input and threshold segmentation. Secondly, sample sets are gathered by two-level hierarchical clustering and Fast Approximate Nearest Neighbors algorithm and unknown pixels are evaluated by the samples. Finally, an optimal matte is obtained by constructing an energy function with local smoothness constraint. Experiments show that the proposed method outperforms most of the state-of-the-art methods with a sparse user input and our method has fewer requirements to get a robust matte.

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Acknowledgments

This paper is supported by “the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities” and “the Science and Technology Planning Project of Hunan Province (2014WK3002)”.

This work was partly supported by the National Science Foundation of China under grant No. 61262033,61262009; the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangxi Province, China under grant No. 20142BAB207009; the Science Foundation of Jiangxi Provincial Department of Education, China under grant No. GJJ13303.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha, 410082, China

    Guanghua Tan & Jun Qi

  2. School of Software and Communication Engineering, Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics, Nanchang, 330012, China

    Hui Chen

Authors
  1. Guanghua Tan
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  2. Hui Chen
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  3. Jun Qi
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Correspondence to Hui Chen.

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Tan, G., Chen, H. & Qi, J. A novel image matting method using sparse manual clicks. Multimed Tools Appl 75, 10213–10225 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-015-3160-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-015-3160-x

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