This paper proposes an interactive method of multi-phase image segmentation that maximizes the boundary information in the superpixels of an image. This new method is adequately fast as a real-time

interactive segmentation tool. The new approach first constructs a multi-layer graph that employs the superpixels of an image as graph nodes. The weights of the graph edges are assigned specifically by applying the GraphCut algorithm that appropriately segments the input image. We also propose an interface through which new indicating strokes can be added interactively to improve segmentation quality. A number of examples demonstrate the capability of the new approach to facilitate accurate multi-phase segmentation at low computational cost. In fact

a satisfactory segmentation result is obtained in less than one second for an image with adimension of 449×275 pixels. The computation time of the GraphCut algorithm increases logarithmically as the number of superpixels increases. By contrast

super-pixel computation time increases linearly. Thus

our new method is advantageous in that it uses superpixels as graph nodes instead of employing pixels

as in previous methods. The utilization of pixels considerably reduces graph dimension.