Mosaic Images Segmentation Using U-Net

We consider the task of segmentation of images of mosaics, where the goal is to segment the image in such a way that each region corresponds exactly to one tile of the mosaic. We propose to use a recent deep learning technique based on a kind of convolutional neural networks, called U-net, that proved to be effective in segmentation tasks. Our method includes a preprocessing phase that allows to learn a U-net despite the scarcity of labeled data, which reflects the peculiarity of the task, in which manual annotation is, in general, costly. We experimentally evaluate our method and compare it against the few other methods for mosaic images segmentation using a set of performance indexes, previously proposed for this task, computed using 11 images of real mosaics. In our results, U-net compares favorably with previous methods. Interestingly, the considered methods make errors of different kinds, consistently with the fact that they are based on different assumptions and techniques. This finding suggests that combining different approaches might lead to an even more effective segmentation.