A Three-Layered Approach to Facade Parsing

Abstract

We propose a novel three-layered approach for semantic segmentation of building facades. In the first layer, starting from an oversegmentation of a facade, we employ the recently introduced machine learning technique Recursive Neural Networks (RNN) to obtain a probabilistic interpretation of each segment. In the second layer, initial labeling is augmented with the information coming from specialized facade component detectors. The information is merged using a Markov Random Field. In the third layer, we introduce weak architectural knowledge , which enforces the final reconstruction to be architecturally plausible and consistent. Rigorous tests performed on two existing datasets of building facades demonstrate that we significantly outperform the current-state of the art, even when using outputs from earlier layers of the pipeline. Also, we show how the final output of the third layer can be used to create a procedural reconstruction.