Superpixel Integrated Grids for Fast Image Segmentation

Abstract: Superpixels have long been used in image simplification to enable more efficient data processing and storage. However, despite their computational potential, their irregular spatial distribution has often forced deep learning approaches to rely on specialized training algorithms and architectures, undermining the original motivation for superpixelations. In this work, we introduce a new superpixel-based data structure, SIGRID (Superpixel-Integrated Grid), as an alternative to full-resolution images in segmentation tasks. By leveraging classical shape descriptors, SIGRID encodes both color and shape information of superpixels while substantially reducing input dimensionality. We evaluate SIGRIDs on four benchmark datasets using two popular convolutional segmentation architectures. Our results show that, despite compressing the original data, SIGRIDs not only match but in some cases surpass the performance of pixel-level representations, all while significantly accelerating model training. This demonstrates that SIGRIDs achieve a favorable balance between accuracy and computational efficiency.