Segmentation of range images into planar regions

This paper presents a hybrid approach to the segmentation of range images into planar regions. The term hybrid refers to a combination of edge- and region-based considerations. A reliable computational procedure which takes the range image discontinuities into account is presented for computing the pixel's normal. The segmentation algorithm consists of two parts. In the first one, the pixels are aggregated according to local properties derived from the input data and are represented by a region adjacency graph (RAG). At this stage, the image is still over-segmented. In the second part, the segmentation is refined thanks to the construction of an irregular pyramid. The base of the pyramid is the RAG previously extracted. The over-segmented regions are merged using a surface-based description. This algorithm has been evaluated on 80 real images acquired by two different range sensors using the methodology proposed in (Hoover et al., 1996). Experimental results are presented and compared to others obtained by four research groups.