Fuzzy directional enlacement landscapes for the evaluation of complex spatial relations

Structural spatial relations between image components are fundamental in the human perception of image similarity, and constitute a challenging topic in the domain of image analysis. By definition, some specific relations are ambiguous and difficult to formalize precisely by humans. In this work, we deal with the issue of evaluating complex spatial configurations, where objects can surround each other, potentially with multiple levels of depth. Based on a recently introduced spatial relation called enlacement, which generalizes the idea of surrounding for arbitrary objects, we propose a fuzzy landscape model that allows both to visualize and evaluate this relation directly in the image space, following different directions. Experiments on several characteristic examples highlight the interest and the behavior of this approach, allowing for rich interpretations of these complex spatial configurations.