I just completed a small project into general purpose machine vision. The essential concept is to grow "bubbles" within regions of an image that have the same color or smooth gradients of color that shift gradually from one to another.
The method is a bit like a traditional flood-fill algorith, but uses a continuous loop of nodes that move and multiply to push the loop ever outward until they hit individual obstacles. The growth is controlled primarily by cellular automata style rules. There's also an algorithm for dealing with cases where the bubble wraps around "islands" of obstacles. Rather than leave a seam behind as the bubble grows, it engulfs these islands by connecting the touching parts of the loop and discarding the parts of the loop left inside.
I also critique the shortcomings of the bubble concept and indicate opportunities to build on its successes.
I've included the source code for download and provided extensive explanation of how the algorithm works. I invite you to check out the project site.
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