Sergio Solimini

This book contains both a synthesis and mathematical analysis of a wide set of algorithms and theories whose aim is the automatic segmen­ tation of digital images as well as the understanding of visual perception. A common formalism for these theories and algorithms is obtained in a variational form. Thank to this formalization, mathematical questions about the soundness of algorithms can be raised and answered. Perception theory has to deal with the complex interaction between regions and "edges" (or boundaries) in an image: in the variational seg­ mentation energies, "edge" terms compete with "region" terms in a way which is supposed to impose regularity on both regions and boundaries. This fact was an experimental guess in perception phenomenology and computer vision until it was proposed as a mathematical conjecture by Mumford and Shah. The third part of the book presents a unified presentation of the evi­ dences in favour of the conjecture. It is proved that the competition of one-dimensional and two-dimensional energy terms in a variational for­ mulation cannot create fractal-like behaviour for the edges. The proof of regularity for the edges of a segmentation constantly involves con­ cepts from geometric measure theory, which proves to be central in im­ age processing theory. The second part of the book provides a fast and self-contained presentation of the classical theory of rectifiable sets (the "edges") and unrectifiable sets ("fractals").

Recently much attention has been devoted to the optimization of transportation networks in a given geographic area. One assumes the distributions of population and of services/workplaces (i.e. the network's sources and sinks) are known, as well as the costs of movement with/without the network, and the cost of constructing/maintaining it. Both the long-term optimization and the short-term, "who goes where," optimization are considered. These models can also be adapted for the optimization of other types of networks, such as telecommunications, pipeline or drainage networks. In the monograph we study the most general problem settings, namely, when neither the shape nor even the topology of the network to be constructed is known a priori.