Normalized colour segmentation for human appearance description

In this paper we present a colour segmentation method based on a normalized colour naming algorithm which removes the effects of the varying conditions due to changes in scene illuminant. Images labelled with the colour name and intensity of small regions are further processed by a region growing step providing a sound segmentation. The method has been tested on a large set of images we get from a surveillance system, whose goal is the automatic retrieval of people from an image database using their appearance description. It is given in terms of placement of the colour regions in clothes. Finally, a quantitative measurement to evaluate the performance of the algorithm has been defined. © 2000 IEEE.