Efficient saliency detection based on Gaussian models

Abstract

This study presents an efficient saliency model mainly aiming at content-based applications such as salient object segmentation. The input colour image is first pre-segmented into a set of regions using the mean shift algorithm. A set of Gaussian models are estimated on the basis of segmented regions, and then for each pixel, a set of normalised colour likelihood measures to different Gaussian models are calculated. The colour saliency measure and spatial saliency measure of each Gaussian model are evaluated based on its colour distinctiveness and the spatial distribution, respectively. Finally, the pixel-wise colour saliency map and spatial saliency map are generated by summing the colour and spatial saliency measures of Gaussian models weighted by the normalised colour likelihood measures, and they are further combined to obtain the final saliency map. Experimental results on a dataset with 1000 images and ground truths demonstrate the better saliency detection performance of our saliency model.