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arXiv · 2601.17071

Superpixel-Based Image Segmentation Using Squared 2-Wasserstein Distances

Jisui Huang·Andreas Alpers·Ke Chen·Na Lei
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Abstract

We present an efficient method for image segmentation in the presence of strong inhomogeneities. The approach can be interpreted as a two-level clustering procedure: pixels are first grouped into superpixels via a linear least-squares assignment problem, which can be viewed as a special case of a discrete optimal transport (OT) problem, and these superpixels are subsequently greedily merged into object-level segments using the squared 2-Wasserstein distance between their empirical distributions. In contrast to conventional superpixel merging strategies based on mean-color distances, our framework employs a distributional OT distance, yielding a mathematically unified formulation across both clustering levels. Numerical experiments demonstrate that this perspective leads to improved segmentation accuracy on challenging images while retaining high computational efficiency.

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Jisui Huang, Andreas Alpers, Ke Chen, Na Lei. 2026-01-22. Superpixel-Based Image Segmentation Using Squared 2-Wasserstein Distances. https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.17071

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