Nonparametric bottom-up saliency detection using hypercomplex spectral contrast

Saliency detection is an useful technique for image semantic analysis such as auto image segmentation, image retargeting, advertising design and image compression. Inspired by two existing saliency detection algorithms, named spectral residual (SR) and phase spectrum of quaternion Fourier transform (PQFT), we propose a new bottom-up saliency detection method which is featured with the introduction of hypercomplex spectral contrast (HSC) in saliency detection. The proposed HSC algorithm introduces the HSV color image vector space in hypercomplex number, and is better comprehensive to consider amplitude spectral contrast into saliency model as well as phase spectral contrast. Mean-while, we also incorporate the human vision nonuniform sampling into our model, which is a common phenomenon that directs visual attention to the logarithmic center of image in natural scenes. Experimental results on two public saliency detection datasets show that our approach performs better than four state-of-the art approaches remarkably.