Panoptic Segmentation
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We propose and study a novel 'Panoptic Segmentation' (PS) task. Panoptic segmentation unifies the traditionally distinct tasks of instance segmentation (detect and segment each object instance) and semantic segmentation (assign a class label to each pixel). The unification is natural and presents novel algorithmic challenges not present in either instance or semantic segmentation when studied in isolation. To measure performance on the task, we introduce a panoptic quality (PQ) measure, and show that it is simple and interpretable. Using PQ, we study human performance on three existing datasets that have the necessary annotations for PS, which helps us better understand the task and metric. We also propose a basic algorithmic approach to combine instance and semantic segmentation outputs into panoptic outputs and compare this to human performance. PS can serve as foundation of future challenges in segmentation and visual recognition. Our goal is to drive research in novel directions by inviting the community to explore the proposed panoptic segmentation task.
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