Segmentation of Mosaic Images Based on Deformable Models Using Genetic Algorithms

Preservation and restoration of ancient mosaics is a crucial activity for the perpetuation of cultural heritage of many countries. Such an activity is usually based on manual procedures which are typically lengthy and costly. Digital imaging technologies have a great potential in this important application domain, from a number of points of view including smaller costs and much broader functionalities. In this work, we propose a mosaic-oriented image segmentation algorithm aimed at identifying automatically the tiles composing a mosaic based solely on an image of the mosaic itself. Our proposal consists of a Genetic Algorithm, in which we represent each candidate segmentation with a set of quadrangles whose shapes and positions are modified during an evolutionary search based on multi-objective optimization. We evaluate our proposal in detail on a set of real mosaics which differ in age and style. The results are highly promising and in line with the current state-of-the-art.