Grouping Contours by Iterated Pairing Network

We describe in this paper a network that performs grouping of image contours. The input to the net are fragments of image contours, and the output is the partitioning of the fragments into groups, together with a saliency measure for each group. The grouping is based on a measure of overall length and curvature. The network decomposes the overall optimization problem into independent optimal pairing problems performed at each node. The resulting computation maps into a uniform locally connected network of simple computing elements.