Anisotropic Diffusion and Curve Evolution for Segmentation of Color Images in Cultural HeritageImage Analysis and Processing –

We propose an innovative procedure for extracting decay regions from color images of stony materials. The use of appropriate image analysis techniques can offer an important contribution to be used together with the traditional methodologies for studying and diagnosing the decay of stony materials that constitute ancient monuments. The presented approach is constituted by the PDE (Partial Differential Equations) model of anisotropic diffusion and by the level set/fast marching method. The anisotropic diffusion is applied in order to limit the smoothing at the zones of high gradient. In the segmentation process, the numerical technique of the level set/fast marching is applied in order to extract from the image only the color region examined. The study case concerns impressive remains of the city of Aosta (Italy).