Abstract: In a boundary active only scheme proposed by the present invention, only a cell in a boundary of region growth is brought into an active mode, and the other cells are brought into a standby mode. The respective cells perform state transition in parallel, and decision of the state transition performed for each clock cycle is not performed in a case where any of the three conditions that none of the adjacent cells is ignited, the cell itself is already ignited, and the cell already belongs to a certain divided region is satisfied. Therefore the number of simultaneously operating cells and that of coupling weight registers are minimized, and control is automatically executed to reduce power consumption.

Abstract: In a boundary active only scheme proposed by the present invention, only a cell in a boundary of region growth is brought into an active mode, and the other cells are brought into a standby mode. The respective cells perform state transition in parallel, and decision of the state transition performed for each clock cycle is not performed in a case where any of the three conditions that none of the adjacent cells is ignited, the cell itself is already ignited, and the cell already belongs to a certain divided region is satisfied. Therefore the number of simultaneously operating cells and that of coupling weight registers are minimized, and control is automatically executed to reduce power consumption.

Abstract: In a boundary active only scheme proposed by the present invention, only a cell in a boundary of region growth is brought into an active mode, and the other cells are brought into a standby mode. The respective cells perform state transition in parallel, and decision of the state transition performed for each clock cycle is not performed in a case where any of the three conditions that none of the adjacent cells is ignited, the cell itself is already ignited, and the cell already belongs to a certain divided region is satisfied. Therefore the number of simultaneously operating cells and that of coupling weight registers are minimized, and control is automatically executed to reduce power consumption.

Abstract: Cells i corresponding to pixels are initialized into a non-excitation state, to calculate coupling weights Wik between the eight cells k adjacent to the cells i, thereby determining leader cells pi=1 based on calculation results. Next, one leader cell yet to be excited is selected as a self-excitable cell. The selected cell is put into the excitation state, the excitable cells are selected based on the coupling weights between the adjacent cells, and the selected cells are put into the excitation state. These operations are repeated until no excitable cell is detected any more and, if there no excitable cell is detected any more, inhibition processing is performed, thereby completing image segmentation of one region. These operations are repeated until there is no non-excited and non-inhibited leader cell any more, thereby pinpointing regions belonging to the same category from an input image and identifying them as an image segmentation regions.

Abstract: In a boundary active only scheme proposed by the present invention, only a cell in a boundary of region growth is brought into an active mode, and the other cells are brought into a standby mode. The respective cells perform state transition in parallel, and decision of the state transition performed for each clock cycle is not performed in a case where any of the three conditions that none of the adjacent cells is ignited, the cell itself is already ignited, and the cell already belongs to a certain divided region is satisfied. Therefore the number of simultaneously operating cells and that of coupling weight registers are minimized, and control is automatically executed to reduce power consumption.

Abstract: Cells i corresponding to pixels are initialized into a non-excitation state, to calculate coupling weights Wik between the eight cells k adjacent to the cells i, thereby determining leader cells pi=1 based on calculation results. Next, one leader cell yet to be excited is selected as a self-excitable cell. The selected cell is put into the excitation state, the excitable cells are selected based on the coupling weights between the adjacent cells, and the selected cells are put into the excitation state. These operations are repeated until no excitable cell is detected any more and, if there no excitable cell is detected any more, inhibition processing is performed, thereby completing image segmentation of one region. These operations are repeated until there is no non-excited and non-inhibited leader cell any more, thereby pinpointing regions belonging to the same category from an input image and identifying them as an image segmentation regions.