A Survey on Segmentation Techniques for Image Processing

Abstract

The segmentation methods for image processing are studied in the presented work. Image segmentation can be defined as a vital step in digital image processing. Also, it is used in various applications including object co-segmentation, recognition tasks, medical imaging, content based image retrieval, object detection, machine vision and video surveillance. A lot of approaches were created for image segmentation. In addition, the main goal of segmentation is to facilitate and alter the image representation into something which is more important and simply to be analyzed. The approaches of image segmentation are splitting the images into a few parts on the basis of image’s features including texture, color, pixel intensity value and so on. With regard to the presented study, many approaches of image segmentation are reviewed and discussed. The techniques of segmentation might be categorized into six classes: First, thresholding segmentation techniques such as global thresholding (iterative thresholding, minimum error thresholding, otsu's, optimal thresholding, histogram concave analysis and entropy based thresholding), local thresholding (Sauvola’s approach, T.R Singh’s approach, Niblack’s approaches, Bernsen’s approach Bruckstein’s and Yanowitz method and Local Adaptive Automatic Binarization) and dynamic thresholding. Second, edge-based segmentation techniques such as gray-histogram technique, gradient based approach (laplacian of gaussian, differential coefficient approach, canny approach, prewitt approach, Roberts approach and sobel approach). Thirdly, region based segmentation approaches including Region growing techniques (seeded region growing (SRG), statistical region growing, unseeded region growing (UsRG)), also merging and region splitting approaches. Fourthly, clustering approaches, including soft clustering (fuzzy C-means clustering (FCM)) and hard clustering (K-means clustering). Fifth, deep neural network techniques such as convolution neural network, recurrent neural networks (RNNs), encoder-decoder and Auto encoder models and support vector machine. Finally, hybrid techniques such as evolutionary approaches, fuzzy logic and swarm intelligent (PSO and ABC techniques) and discusses the pros and cons of each method.