function varargout = mser(varargin) % VL_MSER Maximally Stable Extremal Regions % R=VL_MSER(I) computes the Maximally Stable Extremal Regions (MSER) % [1] of image I with stability threshold DELTA. I is any array of % class UINT8. R is a vector of region seeds. % % A (maximally stable) extremal region is just a connected component % of one of the level sets of the image I. An extremal region can % be recovered from a seed X as the connected component of the level % set {Y: I(Y) <= I(X)} which contains the pixel o index X. % % The function supports images of arbitrary dimension D. % % [R,F]=VL_MSER(...) also returns ellipsoids F fitted to the regions. % Each column of F describes an ellipsoid; F(1:D,i) is the center of % the elliposid and F(D:end,i) are the independent elements of the % co-variance matrix of the ellipsoid. % % Ellipsoids are computed according to the same reference frame of I % seen as a matrix. This means that the first coordinate spans the % first dimension of I. % % Notice that for 2-D images usually the opposite convention is used % (i.e. the first coordinate is the x-axis, which corresponds to the % column index). Thus, if the function VL_PLOTFRAME() is used to plot % the ellipses, the frames F should be `transposed' as in F = F([2 % 1 5 4 3],:). VL_ERTR() exists for this purpose. % % VL_MSER(I,'Option'[,Value]...) accepts the following options % % Delta:: [5] % Set the DELTA parameter of the VL_MSER algorithm. Roughly % speaking, the stability of a region is the relative variation % of the region area when the intensity is changed of +/- % Delta/2. % % MaxArea:: [0.75] % Set the maximum area (volume) of the regions relative to % the image domain area (volume). % % MinArea:: [3 / numPixels] % Set the minimum area (volume) of the regions relative to % the image domain area (volume). % % MaxVariation:: [0.25] % Set the maximum variation (absolute stability score) of the % regions. % % MinDiversity:: [0.2] % Set the minimum diversity of the region. When the relative % area variation of two nested regions is below this threshold, % then only the most stable one is selected. % % BrightOnDark:: [1] % Detect bright-on-dark MSERs. This corresponds to MSERs of the % inverted image. % % DarkOnBright:: [1] % Detect dark-on-bright MSERs. This corresponds to MSERs of the % original image. % % Verbose:: % Be verbose. % % REFERENCES:: % [1] J. Matas, O. Chum, M. Urban, and T. Pajdla, "Robust wide % baseline stereo from maximally stable extremal regions," in % Proc. BMVC, 2002. % % See also: VL_HELP(). [varargout{1:nargout}] = vl_mser(varargin{:});