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Comprehensive features with randomized decision forests for hand segmentation from color images in uncontrolled indoor scenarios

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Abstract

Hand segmentation is an integral part of many computer vision applications, especially gesture recognition. Training a classifier to classify pixels into hand or background using skin color as a feature is one of the most popular methods for this purpose. This approach has been highly restricted to simple hand segmentation scenarios since color feature alone provides very limited information for classification. Meanwhile there have been a rise of segmentation methods utilizing deep learning networks to exploit multi-layers of complex features learned from image data. Yet a deep neural network requires a large database for training and a powerful computational machine for operations due to its complexity in computations. In this work, the development of comprehensive features and optimized uses of these features with a randomized decision forest (RDF) classifier for the task of hand segmentation in uncontrolled indoor environments is investigated. Newly designed image features and new implementations are provided with evaluations of their hand segmentation performances. In total, seven image features which extract pixel or neighborhood related properties from color images are proposed and evaluated individually as well as in combination. The behaviours of feature and RDF parameters are also evaluated and optimum parameters for the scenario under consideration are identified. Additionally, a new dataset containing hand images in uncontrolled indoor scenarios was created during this work. It was observed from the research that a combination of features extracting color, texture, neighborhood histogram and neighborhood probability information outperforms existing methods for hand segmentation in restricted as well as unrestricted indoor environments using just a small training dataset. Computations required for the proposed features and the RDF classifier are light, hence the segmentation algorithm is suited for embedded devices equipped with limited power, memory, and computational capacities.

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Notes

  1. https://vimeo.com/298622291

  2. https://github.com/meetshah1995/pytorch-semseg

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. ManoMotion AB, Stockholm, Sweden

    Manu Martin, Thang Nguyen & Bo Li

  2. Department of Media Technology, Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden

    Shahrouz Yousefi

Authors
  1. Manu Martin
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  2. Thang Nguyen
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  3. Shahrouz Yousefi
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  4. Bo Li
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Correspondence to Manu Martin.

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Appendices

Appendix A: Features

1.1 A.1 Comparison of the new implementation to estimate texture using gabor filters

Figure 20 provides a comparison of the filter response using the new implementation and the original method for one of the selected scale and orientation. The error in this case was 0.02% in mean square sense.

Fig. 20
figure 20

Filtered Gabor filter magnitude response comparison

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Appendix B: Optimization of feature parameters

1.1 B.1 Gabor texture feature

As explained in Section 3.2, there are two parameters associated with the Gabor texture feature: number of scales (nScale) and number of orientations (nOrient). Figure 21 shows how nScale affects the segmentation performance and feature extraction time. The maximum possible value for nScale is 5, limited by image dimensions and the scale down operation used for the faster implementation. It can be observed from the figure that the precision increased with number of scales for both scenarios. On the other hand, the behaviour of recall was different between the databases. The time required for feature estimation showed almost linear relationship with the number scales. nScale = 3 gave good performances in both scenarios.

Fig. 21
figure 21

Effects of nScale on segmentation (nOrient = 8)

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The effect of nOrient on the segmentation output is shown in Fig. 22. Both scenarios displayed convergence of the evaluation measures when 8 orientations were used. The time for feature extraction varied linearly with the number of orientations because of the corresponding increase in filtering operations required at each scale.

Fig. 22
figure 22

Effects of nOrient on segmentation (nScale = 3)

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B.2 Laws texture feature

Number of scales (nScale) and filter width (fWidth) are the two parameters of Laws texture approach. The influence of nScale on segmentation output when fWidth = 3 and fWidth = 5 is shown in Figs. 23 and 24 respectively. The effects of number of scales on segmentation performances were observed to be very similar to that of the Gabor texture method, with optimum results achieved for the nScale value of 3. The segmentation outputs when the filters used were of size 5x5 were slightly better than 3x3 filters.

Fig. 23
figure 23

Effects of nScale parameter of Laws approach (fWidth = 3)

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Fig. 24
figure 24

Effects of nScale parameter of Laws approach (fWidth = 5)

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B.3 Neighborhood difference feature

Effects of the three parameters neiCount, neiSpace and neiOrient on the segmentation performance when the HSV color space was used are shown in Figs. 25, 26 and 27 respectively. Increasing the number of neighbors improved all three evaluation measures for both scenarios at the expense of the time required for feature estimation which increased linearly. In the case of neiSpace, all the evaluation measures converged to a maximum for the value 5. The time was unaffected by this parameter. Lastly, all the evaluation measures showed convergence for a neiOrient value of 8. The time for feature estimation showed an almost linear relationship with number of neighbor orientations.

Fig. 25
figure 25

Effects of neiCount (neiSpace = 1 & neiOrient = 8)

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Fig. 26
figure 26

Effects of neiSpace (neiCount = 25 & neiOrient = 8)

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Fig. 27
figure 27

Effects of neiOrient (neiCount = 25 & neiSpace = 5)

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B.4 Neighbourhood histogram feature

The effects of nBins and hWidth parameters of the neighborhood histogram feature on segmentation performance using the H channel are shown in Figs. 28 and 29 respectively. In the case of nBins, all evaluation measures converge to a maximum for both scenarios. The time requirement varied linearly with increasing number of bins. On the other hand, the hWidth parameter showed a decrease in recall and f-score after crossing a limit value. Due to the custom implementation used, the time was unaffected by this parameter.

Fig. 28
figure 28

Effects of nBins (hWidth = 51)

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Fig. 29
figure 29

Effects of hWdith (nBins = 30)

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B.5 Neighborhood probability feature

The effects of different parameters of the neighborhood probability feature on the segmentation performance are given in Figs. 30, 31 and 32. The behaviour is found to be similar to that of the neighborhood difference feature.

Fig. 30
figure 30

Effects of neiCount (neiSpace = 10 & neiOrient = 8)

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Fig. 31
figure 31

Effects of neiSpace (neiCount = 4 & neiOrient = 8)

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Fig. 32
figure 32

Effects of neiOrient (neiCount = 4 & neiSpace = 10)

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Appendix C: Evaluation of other feature combinations

Figure 33 shows the evaluation results of feature combinations which are not listed in Section 4.4. The patterns visible in these results are similar to the ones identified earlier.

Fig. 33
figure 33

F-scores of other feature combinations

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Martin, M., Nguyen, T., Yousefi, S. et al. Comprehensive features with randomized decision forests for hand segmentation from color images in uncontrolled indoor scenarios. Multimed Tools Appl 78, 20987–21020 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-019-7445-3

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