Integer Linear Programming (ILP) formulations of Markov random fields (MRFs) models with global connectivity priors were investigated previously in computer vision, e.g., globalinter,globalconn . In these works, only Linear Programming (LP) relaxations globalinter,globalconn or simplified versions graphcutbase of the problem were solved. This paper investigates the ILP of multi-label MRF with exact connectivity priors via a branch-and-cut method, which provably finds globally optimal solutions. The method enforces connectivity priors iteratively by a cutting plane method, and provides feasible solutions with a guarantee on sub-optimality even if we terminate it earlier. The proposed ILP can also be applied as a post-processing method on top of any existing multi-label segmentation approach. We demonstrate the power and usefulness of our model by several experiments on the BSDS500 image dataset, as well as on medical images with trained probability maps.
Exact global connectivity potentials are formulated as an ILP in @cite_3 , where connected subgraph polytopes are introduced. Due to the high computational cost of solving the corresponding @math -hard problem, the work in @cite_3 examined only LP relaxations of the ensuing ILP. Although the general formulation works for multi-label MRFs, the authors applied it only to binary MRF problems. In @cite_22 , the authors optimized exactly a linear (unary-potential) objective subject to connectivity constraint in a binary segmentation problem. It solves two instances of medical benchmark datasets to optimality for the first time. However, the model does not apply to the general multi-label pairwise MRF objective in , which is of wide interest in vision applications. Finally, it is worth mentioning that the subgraph connectivity problem also plays an important role in the operations research community, and has been applied, for instance, to the forest planning problem @cite_10 , where each subregion of the forest is constrained to be connected.
@cite_10 @cite_22 @cite_3
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We consider the problem of optimizing multilabel MRFs, which is in general NP-hard and ubiquitous in low-level computer vision. One approach for its solution is to formulate it as an integer linear programming and relax the integrality constraints. The approach we consider in this paper is to first convert the multi-label MRF into an equivalent binary-label MRF and then to relax it. The resulting relaxation can be efficiently solved using a maximum flow algorithm. Its solution provides us with a partially optimal labelling of the binary variables. This partial labelling is then easily transferred to the multi-label problem. We study the theoretical properties of the new relaxation and compare it with the standard one. Specifically, we compare tightness, and characterize a subclass of problems where the two relaxations coincide. We propose several combined algorithms based on the technique and demonstrate their performance on challenging computer vision problems. In (2015), we proposed a graph-based formulation that links and clusters person hypotheses over time by solving a minimum cost subgraph multicut problem. In this paper, we modify and extend (2015) in three ways: (1) We introduce a novel local pairwise feature based on local appearance matching that is robust to partial occlusion and camera motion. (2) We perform extensive experiments to compare different pairwise potentials and to analyze the robustness of the tracking formulation. (3) We consider a plain multicut problem and remove outlying clusters from its solution. This allows us to employ an efficient primal feasible optimization algorithm that is not applicable to the subgraph multicut problem of (2015). Unlike the branch-and-cut algorithm used there, this efficient algorithm used here is applicable to long videos and many detections. Together with the novel pairwise feature, it eliminates the need for the intermediate tracklet representation of (2015). We demonstrate the effectiveness of our overall approach on the MOT16 benchmark ( 2016), achieving state-of-art performance. This paper studies a multi-facility network synthesis problem, called the Two-level Network Design (TLND) problem, that arises in the topological design of hierarchical communication, transportation, and electric power distribution networks. We are given an undirected network containing two types of nodes---primary and secondary---and fixed costs for installing either a primary or a secondary facility on each edge. Primary nodes require higher grade interconnections than secondary nodes, using the more expensive primary facilities. The TLND problem seeks a minimum cost connected design that spans all the nodes, and connects primary nodes via edges containing primary facilities; the design can use either primary or secondary edges to connect the secondary nodes. The TLND problem generalizes the well-known Steiner network problem and the hierarchical network design problem. In this paper, we study the relationship between alternative model formulations for this problem (e.g., directed and undirected models), and analyze the worst-case performance for a composite TLND heuristic based upon solving embedded subproblems (e.g., minimum spanning tree and either Steiner tree or shortest path subproblems). When the ratio of primary to secondary costs is the same for all edges and when we solve the embedded subproblems optimally, the worst-case performance ratio of the composite TLND heuristic is 4 3. This result applies to the hierarchical network design problem with constant primary-to-secondary cost ratio since its subproblems are shortest path and minimum spanning tree problems. For more general situations, we express the TLND heuristic worst-case ratio in terms of the performance of any heuristic used to solve the embedded Steiner tree subproblem. A companion paper develops and tests a dual ascent procedure that generates tight upper and lower bounds on the optimal value of a multi-level extension of this problem. This paper addresses the problem of exactly inferring the maximum a posteriori solutions of discrete multi-label MRFs or CRFs with higher order cliques. We present a framework to transform special classes of multi-label higher order functions to submodular second order Boolean functions (referred to as Fs 2), which can be minimized exactly using graph cuts and we characterize those classes. The basic idea is to use two or more Boolean variables to encode the states of a single multi-label variable. There are many ways in which this can be done and much interesting research lies in finding ways which are optimal or minimal in some sense. We study the space of possible encodings and find the ones that can transform the most general class of functions to Fs 2. Our main contributions are two-fold. First, we extend the subclass of submodular energy functions that can be minimized exactly using graph cuts. Second, we show how higher order potentials can be used to improve single view 3D reconstruction results. We believe that our work on exact minimization of higher order energy functions will lead to similar improvements in solutions of other labelling problems.