Techniques are disclosed for segmenting an image frame of a live camera feed. A biasing scheme can be used to initially localize pixels within the image that are likely to contain the object being segmented. An optimization algorithm for an energy optimization function, such as a graph cut algorithm, can be used with a non-localized neighborhood graph structure and the initial location bias for localizing pixels in the image frame representing the object. Subsequently, a matting algorithm can be used to define a pixel mask surrounding at least a portion of the object boundary. The bias and the pixel mask can be continuously updated and refined as the image frame changes with the live camera feed.