Identifying high saliency regions in digital images

A system comprising:

• a data processing system;
• and
• a memory system communicatively connected to the data processing system and storing instructions configured to cause the data processing system to implement a method for identifying high saliency regions in a digital image having an array of image pixels wherein the method includes:
• analyzing the digital image to segment the digital image into a plurality of segmented regions, each segmented region including a set of image pixels and being bounded by a segment boundary;
• determining a saliency value for each segmented region by:
• determining a surround region including a set of image pixels surrounding the segmented region, wherein the surround region has an outer boundary and an inner boundary defined by the segment boundary;
• analyzing the image pixels in the segmented region to determine one or more segmented region attributes;
• analyzing the image pixels in the surround region to determine one or more corresponding surround region attributes;
• and
• determining a region saliency value responsive to differences between the one or more segmented region attributes and the corresponding surround region attributes;
• merging neighboring segmented regions that share a common boundary in response to determining that one or more specified merging criteria are satisfied, wherein the specified merging criteria include a criterion that the saliency of the merged segmented region be higher than the saliency of neighboring segmented regions;
• designating one or more of the segmented regions having the highest region saliency values to be high saliency regions;
• and
• storing an indication of the one or more high saliency regions in a processor-accessible memory.