Regular texture analysis as statistical model selection

An approach to the analysis of images of regular texture is proposed in which lattice hypotheses are used to define statistical models. These models are then compared in terms of their ability to explain the image. A method based on this approach is described in which lattice hypotheses are generated using analysis of peaks in the image autocorrelation function, statistical models are based on Gaussian or Gaussian mixture clusters, and model comparison is performed using the marginal likelihood as approximated by the Bayes Information Criterion (BIC). Experiments on public domain regular texture images and a commercial textile image archive demonstrate substantially improved accuracy compared to two competing methods. The method is also used for classification of texture images as regular or irregular. An application to thumbnail image extraction is discussed.