Topographical Tools for Filtering and Segmentation, Watersheds on Node- or Edge-weighted Graphs

Node or edge weighted graphs are able to represent many types of structures, including images. Topographical concepts are applied for simplifying or structuring them. It is shown how from local conditions involving 2 neighboring nodes and the edge connecting them emerge large scale structures like lakes inside catchment zones. A wealth of new applications and algorithms are derived, easily tailored for any type of target hardware, from the smartphone to the super clusters of processors.