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Deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) trained on the pixel-level annotated images have achieved improvements in semantic segmentation. Due to the high cost of labeling training data, their applications may have great limitation. However, weakly supervised segmentation approaches can significantly reduce human labeling efforts. In this paper, we introduce a new framework to generate high-quality initial pixel-level annotations. By using a hierarchical image segmentation algorithm to predict the boundary map, we select the optimal scale of high-quality hierarchies. In the initialization step, scribble annotations and the saliency map are combined to construct a graphic model over the optimal scale segmentation. By solving the minimal cut problem, it can spread information from scribbles to unmarked regions. In the training process, the segmentation network is trained by using the initial pixel-level annotations. To iteratively optimize the segmentation, we use a graphical model to refine segmentation masks and retrain the segmentation network to get more precise pixel-level annotations. The experimental results on Pascal VOC 2012 dataset demonstrate that the proposed framework outperforms most of weakly supervised semantic segmentation methods and achieves the state-of-the-art performance, which is [Formula: see text] mIoU.

Hierarchical image segmentation is a prevalent technique in the literature for improving segmentation quality, where the segmentation result needs to be searched at different scales of the hierarchy to identify objects represented from various scales. In this paper, a novel framework for improving the quality of object segmentation is presented. To this end, the authors first select the optimal segments among several hierarchical scales of the input image using simple mid‐level features and dynamic programming. Simultaneously, deep seeds are localised on the input image for the foreground and background classes using a deep classification network and a saliency network, respectively. Then, a graphical model is constructed as a set of nodes that jointly propagate information from deep seeds to unmarked regions to obtain the final object segmentation. Comprehensive experiments are performed on different datasets for popular hierarchical image segmentation algorithms. The experimental results show that the proposed framework can significantly improve the quality of object segmentation at low computational costs and without training any segmentation network.

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