In this paper, the Gibbs-Markov approach is extended to integration of
observations provided by virtual sensors and organized according to a
hierarchical taxonomy. The proposed extension is applied to image res
toration and segmentation. A model of coupled Gibbs-Markov random fiel
ds (GMRFs) is presented, which involves performing restoration and lab
eling at two abstraction levels. i.e., the image (pixel) level and the
region level. The maximum a posteriori (MAP) approach usually applied
as an estimation criterion for single-level GMRFs is shown to be a sp
ecial case of the most probable explanation (MPE) criterion, which is
valid for multilevel GMRFs. A stochastic distributed optimization algo
rithm is used to reach the solution.