Tattoo segmentation is challenging due to the complexity and large variance in tattoo structures. We have developed a segmentation algorithm for finding tattoos in an image. Our basic idea is split-merge: split each tattoo image into clusters through a bottom-up process, learn to merge the clusters containing skin and then distinguish tattoo from the other skin via top-down prior in the image itself. Tattoo segmentation with unknown number of clusters is transferred to a figureground

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... n. We have applied our segmentation algorithm on a tattoo dataset and the results have shown that our tattoo segmentation system is efficient and suitable for further tattoo classification and retrieval purposes.