Leave-one-out kernel optimization for shadow detection

The objective of this work is to detect shadows in images. We pose this as the problem of labeling image regions, where each region corresponds to a group of superpixels. To predict the label of each region, we train a kernel Least-Squares SVM for separating shadow and non-shadow regions. The parameters of the kernel and the classifier are jointly learned to minimize the leave-one-out cross validation error. Optimizing the leave-one-out cross validation error is typically difficult, but it can be done efficiently in our framework. Experiments on two challenging shadow datasets, UCF and UIUC, show that our region classifier outperforms more complex methods. We further enhance the performance of the region classifier by embedding it in an MRF framework and adding pairwise contextual cues. This leads to a method that significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art.