Method, system and apparatus for determining a property of an image

1. A method of determining a property of an image captured by a camera, the method comprising:

determining a plurality of vanishing points from the image;

associating each pixel of the image with at least one of the vanishing points based on alignment of a pixel edge orientation with a vanishing point direction for each pixel, a similarity of an orientation of an image gradient at each pixel, and a vanishing point direction from each pixel to each of the vanishing points;

partitioning the image into a set of regions based on a pair of the vanishing points;

constructing a space partition tree by iterating the partitioning;

determining a boundary line for each region of the set of regions that passes through at least one of the vanishing points of said pair of vanishing points;

determining, for at least one of said regions, a confidence value for the property of the image based on pixels in the at least one region; and

determining the property of the image for one or more pixels within said image based on the confidence value.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein said property is surface orientation supported by the pair of vanishing points.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein said property is a semantic label based on an appearance of pixels within one of the set of regions.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the set of regions is reduced to a second set of regions by merging neighbouring regions according to a second property.

5. A system for determining a property of an image captured by a camera, the system comprising:

a memory for storing data and a computer program; and

a processor coupled to the memory for executing the computer program, the computer program comprising instructions for:

determining a plurality of vanishing points from the image;

associating each pixel of the image with at least one of the vanishing points based on alignment of a pixel edge orientation with a vanishing point direction for each pixel, a similarity of an orientation of an image gradient at each pixel, and a vanishing point direction from each pixel to each of the vanishing points;

partitioning the image into a set of regions based on a pair of the vanishing points;

constructing a space partition tree by iterating the partitioning;

determining a boundary line for each region of the set of regions that passes through at least one of the vanishing points of said pair of vanishing points;

determining, for at least one of said regions, a confidence value for the property of the image based on pixels in the at least one region; and

determining the property of the image for one or more pixels within said image based on the confidence value.

6. A non-transitory computer readable medium having a computer program stored thereon for determining a property of an image captured by a camera, the program comprising:

code for determining a plurality of vanishing points from the image;

code for associating each pixel of the image with at least one of the vanishing points based on alignment of a pixel edge orientation with a vanishing point direction for each pixel, a similarity of an orientation of an image gradient at each pixel, and a vanishing point direction from each pixel to each of the vanishing points;

code for partitioning the image into a set of regions based on a pair of the vanishing points;

code for constructing a space partition tree by iterating the partitioning;

code for determining a boundary line for each region of the set of regions that passes through at least one of the vanishing points of said pair of vanishing points;

code for determining, for at least one of said regions, a confidence value for the property of the image based on pixels in the at least one region; and

code for determining the property of the image for one or more pixels within said image based on the confidence value.

7. An apparatus for determining a property of an image captured by a camera, the apparatus comprising:

module for determining a plurality of vanishing points from the image;

module for associating each pixel of the image with at least one of the vanishing points based on alignment of a pixel edge orientation with a vanishing point direction for each pixel, a similarity of an orientation of an image gradient at each pixel, and a vanishing point direction from each pixel to each of the vanishing points;

module for partitioning the image into a set of regions based on a pair of the vanishing points;

module for constructing a space partition tree by iterating the partitioning;

module for determining a boundary line for each region of the set of regions that passes through at least one of the vanishing points of said pair of vanishing points;

module for determining, for at least one of said regions, a confidence value for the property of the image based on pixels in the at least one region; and

module for determining the property of the image for one or more pixels within said image based on the confidence value; and

at least one processor, wherein each module is implemented by the at least one processor.