Minimization — Local Methods

Abstract

After the energy function E(f), including both the functional form and the involved parameters, is given and thus the optimal solution f* = min _f E(f) is entirely defined, the remaining problem is to find the solution. It is most desirable to express the solution in closed-form but generally, this is very difficult in vision problems due to the complexity caused by interactions between labels. Therefore, optimal solutions are usually computed by using some iterative search techniques. This chapter describes techniques for finding local minima and discusses related issues.