A simple method for detecting salient regions

A simple method for detecting salient regions in images is proposed. It requires only edge detection, threshold decomposition, the distance transform, and thresholding. Moreover, it avoids the need for setting any parameter values. Experiments show that the resulting regions are relatively coarse, but overall the method is surprisingly effective, and has the benefit of easy implementation. Quantitative tests were carried out on Liu et al.'s dataset of 5000 images. Although the ratings of our simple method were not as good as their approach which involved an extensive training stage, they were comparable to several other popular methods from the literature. Further tests on Kootstra and Schomaker's dataset of 99 images also showed promising results. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.