Quantum vs Classical Ranking in Segment Grouping

Francisco Escolano, Boyan Bonev, Edwin R. Hancock

Abstract: In this paper we explore the use of ranking as a mean of guiding unsupervised image segmentation. Starting by the well known Pagerank algorithm we introduce an extension based on quantum walks. Pagerank (rank) can be used to prioritize the merging of segments embedded in uniform regions (parts of the image with roughly similar appearance statistics). Quantum Pagerank, on the other hand, gives high priority to boundary segments. This latter effect is due to the higher order interactions captured by quantum fluctuations. However we found that qrank does not always outperform its classical version. We analyze the Pascal VOC database and give Intersection over Union (IoU) performances.