Automatic texture feature selection for image pixel classification

Pixel-based texture classifiers and segmenters are typically based on the combination of texture feature extraction methods that belong to a single family (e.g., Gabor filters). However, combining texture methods from different families has proven to produce better classification results both quantitatively and qualitatively. Given a set of multiple texture feature extraction methods from different families, this paper presents a new texture feature selection scheme that automatically determines a reduced subset of methods whose integration produces classification results comparable to those obtained when all the available methods are integrated, but with a significantly lower computational cost. Experiments with both Brodatz and real outdoor images show that the proposed selection scheme is more advantageous than well-known general purpose feature selection algorithms applied to the same problem.