Efficient hierarchical segmentation based on PSNR for low bit rate coding

This paper presents a hierarchical morphological segmentation algorithm based on PSNR for each region. The algorithm follows a top-down procedure. It first takes into account the global information and produces a coarse segmentation, that is, with a small number of regions. Then, each region has different quality in coarse segmented image. Thus, the region with low quality is selected by PSNR and improved by introducing regions corresponding to more local information. It is able to improve the subjective quality of the image while maintaining the bit rates and control the bit rates for certain applications such as mobile audiovisual communications and videotelephone through PSTN, of which the available transmission bandwidth is very limited.