Constructing Stochastic Pyramids by MIDES - Maximal Independent Directed Edge Set

We present a new method (MIDES) to determine contraction kernels for the construction of graph pyramids. Experimentally the new method has a reduction factor higher than 2.0. Thus, the new method yields a higher reduction factor than the stochastic decimation algorithm (MIS) and maximal independent edge set (MIES), in all tests. This means the number of vertices in the subgraph induced by any set of contractible edges is reduced to half or less by a single parallel contraction. The lower bound of the reduction factor becomes crucial with large images.