  Kernel estimation techniques, such as mean shift, suffer from one major
drawback: the kernel bandwidth selection. The bandwidth can be fixed for all
the data set or can vary at each points. Automatic bandwidth selection becomes
a real challenge in case of multidimensional heterogeneous features. This paper
presents a solution to this problem. It is an extension of \cite{Comaniciu03a}
which was based on the fundamental property of normal distributions regarding
the bias of the normalized density gradient. The selection is done iteratively
for each type of features, by looking for the stability of local bandwidth
estimates across a predefined range of bandwidths. A pseudo balloon mean shift
filtering and partitioning are introduced. The validity of the method is
demonstrated in the context of color image segmentation based on a
5-dimensional space.
