An interactive testbed for development of expert tools for pattern recognition

The initial implementation of an interactive testbed for development of expert system applications in image processing, i.e., a toolbox of procedures designed to facilitate the capture of expert knowledge for region grouping and analysis is described. The user can elect to interactively enter commands (via a command interpreter) for region manipulation to, in effect, simulate the actions of a hypothetical expert system. The user can then incorporate any rules and procedures as derived from interactive experimentation into customized region processing procedures using the library of utility functions. An iterative technique based on image pyramids is used to compute the initial region segmentation without the use of process parameters. These regions can then be interactively examined and manipulated using the command interpreter.