In this paper, we present the concept of maximally stable homogeneous regions (MSHR). MSHR are conceptually very similar to maximally stable extremal regions but can be segmented in images with an arbitrary number of channels. The computation of the presented MSHR relies on the construction of a quasi-flat zone hierarchy. We present a fast algorithm for computing the hierarchy that overcomes the runtime restrictions of existing approaches. The proposed algorithm can construct the quasi-flat zone hierarchy efficiently in real time, scales linearly in the number of pixels and, in practice, sub-linearly in the number of channels. In the experiments, we display how MSHR can be used to improve the results of optical character recognition systems and to perform 3D object segmentation. We further demonstrate the universality and speed of the proposed algorithm for three example applications: image segmentation, object tracking, and image filtering.

在本文中，我们提出了最大稳定的同质区域（MSHR）的概念。MSHR在概念上与最大稳定的末端区域非常相似，但可以在具有任意数量通道的图像中进行分割。提出的MSHR的计算依赖于准平坦区域层次结构的构建。我们提出了一种用于计算层次结构的快速算法，该算法克服了现有方法的运行时限制。所提出的算法可以实时有效地构造准平坦区域层次结构，在像素数量上线性缩放，在实践中，在通道数量上线性地缩放。在实验中，我们展示了如何使用MSHR改善光学字符识别系统的结果并执行3D对象分割。