Popular Image Segmentation Techniques Research Articles

A new fusion of whale optimizer algorithm with Kapur's entropy for multi-threshold image segmentation: analysis and validations.

The separation of an object from other objects or the background by selecting the optimal threshold values remains a challenge in the field of image segmentation. Threshold segmentation is one of the most popular image segmentation techniques. The traditional methods for finding the optimum threshold are computationally expensive, tedious, and may be inaccurate. Hence, this paper proposes an Improved Whale Optimization Algorithm (IWOA) based on Kapur’s entropy for solving multi-threshold segmentation of the gray level image. Also, IWOA supports its performance using linearly convergence increasing and local minima avoidance technique (LCMA), and ranking-based updating method (RUM). LCMA technique accelerates the convergence speed of the solutions toward the optimal solution and tries to avoid the local minima problem that may fall within the optimization process. To do that, it updates randomly the positions of the worst solutions to be near to the best solution and at the same time randomly within the search space according to a certain probability to avoid stuck into local minima. Because of the randomization process used in LCMA for updating the solutions toward the best solutions, a huge number of the solutions around the best are skipped. Therefore, the RUM is used to replace the unbeneficial solution with a novel updating scheme to cover this problem. We compare IWOA with another seven algorithms using a set of well-known test images. We use several performance measures, such as fitness values, Peak Signal to Noise Ratio, Structured Similarity Index Metric, Standard Deviation, and CPU time.

A Study on Region-Based Image Segmentation Techniques

This paper addresses the comparison of two popular region-based image segmentation techniques namely the Watershed method and the Mean-shift method. The watershed method is a mathematical morphology based image segmentation approach while Mean-shift method is a data-clustering method that searches for the local maximal density points and then groups all the data to the clusters defined by these maximal density points. Here the efficiency of the both segmentation techniques is presented

Enhanced Slime Mould Algorithm for Multilevel Thresholding Image Segmentation Using Entropy Measures.

Image segmentation is a fundamental but essential step in image processing because it dramatically influences posterior image analysis. Multilevel thresholding image segmentation is one of the most popular image segmentation techniques, and many researchers have used meta-heuristic optimization algorithms (MAs) to determine the threshold values. However, MAs have some defects; for example, they are prone to stagnate in local optimal and slow convergence speed. This paper proposes an enhanced slime mould algorithm for global optimization and multilevel thresholding image segmentation, namely ESMA. First, the Levy flight method is used to improve the exploration ability of SMA. Second, quasi opposition-based learning is introduced to enhance the exploitation ability and balance the exploration and exploitation. Then, the superiority of the proposed work ESMA is confirmed concerning the 23 benchmark functions. Afterward, the ESMA is applied in multilevel thresholding image segmentation using minimum cross-entropy as the fitness function. We select eight greyscale images as the benchmark images for testing and compare them with the other classical and state-of-the-art algorithms. Meanwhile, the experimental metrics include the average fitness (mean), standard deviation (Std), peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR), structure similarity index (SSIM), feature similarity index (FSIM), and Wilcoxon rank-sum test, which is utilized to evaluate the quality of segmentation. Experimental results demonstrated that ESMA is superior to other algorithms and can provide higher segmentation accuracy.

Image Analysis of Sauvola and Niblack Thresholding Techniques

Image segmentation is a critical problem in computer vision and other image processing applications. Image segmentation has become quite challenging over the years due to its widespread use in a variety of applications. Image thresholding is a popular image segmentation technique. The segmented image quality is determined by the techniques used to determine the threshold value.A locally adaptive thresholding method based on neighborhood processing is presented in this paper. The performance of locally thresholding methods like Niblack and Sauvola was demonstrated using real-world images, printed text, and handwritten text images. Threshold-based segmentation methods were investigated using misclassification error, MSE and PSNR. Experiments have shown that the Sauvola method outperforms real-world images, printed and handwritten text images in terms of misclassification error, PSNR, and MSE.

VOTENET++: REGISTRATION REFINEMENT FOR MULTI-ATLAS SEGMENTATION.

Multi-atlas segmentation (MAS) is a popular image segmentation technique for medical images. In this work, we improve the performance of MAS by correcting registration errors before label fusion. Specifically, we use a volumetric displacement field to refine registrations based on image anatomical appearance and predicted labels. We show the influence of the initial spatial alignment as well as the beneficial effect of using label information for MAS performance. Experiments demonstrate that the proposed refinement approach improves MAS performance on a 3D magnetic resonance dataset of the knee.

Multiresolution Bio-Medical Image Segmentation using Fuzzy C-Means Clustering

Fuzzy c-means clustering is a popular image segmentation technique, in which a single pixel belongs to multiple clusters, with varying degree of membership. The main drawback of this method is it sensitive to noise. This method can be improved by incorporating multiresolution stationary wavelet analysis. In this paper we develop a robust image segmentation method using Fuzzy c-means clustering and wavelet transform. The experimental result shows that the proposed method is more accurate than the Fuzzy c-means clustering.

Moth-Flame Optimization Algorithm Based Multilevel Thresholding for Image Segmentation

Multilevel thresholding is a popular image segmentation technique. However, computational complexity of multilevel thresholding increases very rapidly with increasing number of thresholds. Metaheuristic algorithms are applied to reduce computational complexity of multilevel thresholding. A new method of multilevel thresholding based on Moth-Flame Optimization (MFO) algorithm is proposed in this paper. The goodness of the thresholds is evaluated using Kapur's entropy or Otsu's between class variance function. The proposed method is tested on a set of benchmark test images and the performance is compared with PSO (Particle Swarm Optimization) and BFO (Bacterial Foraging Optimization) based methods. The results are analyzed objectively using the fitness function and the Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) values. It is found that MFO based multilevel thresholding method performs better than the PSO and BFO based methods.

Intelligent Image Segment for Material Composition Detection

In the process of material composition detection, the image analysis is an inevitable problem. Multilevel thresholding based OTSU method is one of the most popular image segmentation techniques. How, with the increase of the number of thresholds, the computing time increases exponentially. To overcome this problem, this paper proposed an artificial bee colony algorithm with a two-level topology. This improved artificial bee colony algorithm can quickly find out the suitable thresholds and nearly no trap into local optimal. The test results confirm it good performance.

A joint intensity and edge magnitude-based multilevel thresholding algorithm for the automatic segmentation of pathological MR brain images

Multilevel thresholding is one of the most popular image segmentation techniques due to its simplicity and accuracy. Most of the thresholding approaches use either the histogram of an image or information from the grey-level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) to compute the threshold. The medical images like MRI usually have vague boundaries and poor contrast. So, segmenting these images using solely histogram or texture attributes of GLCM proves to be insufficient. This paper proposes a novel multilevel thresholding approach for automatic segmentation of tumour lesions from magnetic resonance images. The proposed technique exploits both intensity and edge magnitude information present in image histogram and GLCM to compute the multiple thresholds. Subsequently, using both attributes, a hybrid fitness function has been formulated which can capture the variations in intensity and the edge magnitude present in different tumour groups effectively. Mutation-based particle swarm optimization (MPSO) technique has been used to optimize the fitness function so as to mitigate the problem of high computational complexity existing in the exhaustive search methods. Moreover, MPSO has better exploration capabilities as compared to conventional particle swarm optimization. The performance of the devised technique has been evaluated and compared with two other intensity- and texture-based approaches using three different measures: Jaccard, Dice and misclassification error. To compute these quantitative metrics, experiments were conducted on a series of images, including low-grade glioma tumour volumes taken from brain tumour image segmentation benchmark 2012 and 2015 data sets and real clinical tumour images. Experimental results show that the proposed approach outperforms the other competing algorithms by achieving an average value equal to 0.752, 0.854, 0.0052; 0.648, 0.762, 0.0177; 0.710, 0.813, 0.0148 and 0.886, 0.937, 0.0037 for four different data sets.

A cooperative honey bee mating algorithm and its application in multi-threshold image segmentation

Multilevel thresholding has been one of the most popular image segmentation techniques; however, most of these techniques are time-consuming. This paper proposes a cooperative honey bee mating-based algorithm for natural scenery image segmentation using multilevel thresholding (CHBMA) to save computation time while conquering the curse of dimensionality. The characteristics of natural scenery images are random, imprecise, complicated, and noisy. The locations of interest points in them are not regular. Our proposed algorithm, which is based on honey bee mating algorithms (HBMA) and cooperative learning, considerably enhances the search capability of the algorithm. In the algorithm, we adopt a new population initialization strategy to make the search more efficient, and this strategy works in accordance with the characteristics of multilevel thresholding in an image; the thresholding is arranged from a low gray level to a high gray level. Extensive experiments have demonstrated that our proposed algorithm can deliver more effective and efficient results than state-of-the-art population-based thresholding methods. Thus, our algorithm can be applied in complex image processing, such as automatic target recognition.

Brain image segmentation using semi-supervised clustering

The objective of brain image segmentation is to partition the brain images into different non-overlapping homogeneous regions representing the different anatomical structures. Magnetic resonance brain image segmentation has large number of applications in diagnosis of neurological disorders like Alzheimer diseases, Parkinson related syndrome etc. But automatically segmenting the MR brain image is not an easy task. To solve this problem, several unsupervised and supervised based classification techniques have been developed in the literature. But supervised classification techniques are more time consuming and cost-sensitive due to the requirement of sufficient labeled data. In contrast, unsupervised classification techniques work without using any prior information but it suffers from the local trap problems. So, to overcome the problems associated with unsupervised and supervised classification techniques, we have proposed a new semi-supervised clustering technique using the concepts of multiobjective optimization and applied this technique for automatic segmentation of MR brain images in the intensity space. Multiple centers are used to encode a cluster in the form of a string. The proposed clustering technique utilizes intensity values of the brain pixels as the features. Additionally it also assumes that the actual class label information of 10% points of a particular image data set is also known. Three cluster validity indices are utilized as the objective functions, which are simultaneously optimized using AMOSA, a modern multiobjective optimization technique based on the concepts of simulated annealing. First two cluster validity indices are symmetry distance based Sym-index and Euclidean distance based I-index, which are based on unsupervised properties. Last one is a supervised information based cluster validity index, Minkowski Index. The effectiveness of this proposed semi-supervised clustering technique is demonstrated on several simulated MR normal brain images and MR brain images having some multiple sclerosis lesions. The performance of the proposed semi-supervised clustering technique is compared with some other popular image segmentation techniques like Fuzzy C-means, Expectation Maximization and some recent image clustering techniques like multi-objective based MCMOClust technique, and Fuzzy-VGAPS clustering techniques.

Image Segmentation Based on Framework of Two-dimensional Histogram and Class Variance Criterion

Histogram thresholding is one of the most popular image segmentation techniques. Variance-based thresholding is a famous method in which. In this paper, a new method based the framework of two-dimensional gray level histogram and class variance criterion is proposed. The methodology for image segmentation using two-dimensional histogram and variance criterion is elaborated firstly. Then the algorithm of the presented scheme is realized through recursion. Finally, the proposed method is tested on synthetic and real-world images. Experimental results show that the proposed method is better to overcome the shortcomings of the conventional variance-based methods, and the effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated by the experiments.

A novel image thresholding method based on membrane computing and fuzzy entropy

Multi-level thresholding methods are a class of most popular image segmentation techniques, however, they are not computationally efficient since they exhaustively search the optimal thresholds to optimize the objective function. In order to eliminate the shortcoming, a novel multi-level thresholding method for image segmentation based on tissue P systems is proposed in this paper. The fuzzy entropy is used as the evaluation criterion to find optimal segmentation thresholds. The presented method can effectively search the optimal thresholds for multi-level thresholding based on fuzzy entropy due to parallel computing ability and particular mechanism of tissue P systems. Experimental results of both qualitative and quantitative comparisons for the proposed method and several existing methods illustrate its applicability and effectiveness.

Modified bacterial foraging algorithm based multilevel thresholding for image segmentation

Multilevel thresholding is one of the most popular image segmentation techniques. In order to determine the thresholds, most methods use the histogram of the image. This paper proposes multilevel thresholding for histogram-based image segmentation using modified bacterial foraging (MBF) algorithm. To improve the global searching ability and convergence speed of the bacterial foraging algorithm, the best bacteria among all the chemotactic steps are passed to the subsequent generations. The optimal thresholds are found by maximizing Kapur's (entropy criterion) and Otsu's (between-class variance) thresholding functions using MBF algorithm. The superiority of the proposed algorithm is demonstrated by considering fourteen benchmark images and compared with other existing approaches namely bacterial foraging (BF) algorithm, particle swarm optimization algorithm (PSO) and genetic algorithm (GA). The findings affirmed the robustness, fast convergence and proficiency of the proposed MBF over other existing techniques. Experimental results show that the Otsu based optimization method converges quickly as compared with Kapur's method.

Multilevel Thresholding for Image Segmentation Through an Improved Quantum-Behaved Particle Swarm Algorithm

Multilevel thresholding is one of the most popular image segmentation techniques. Some of these are time-consuming algorithms. In this paper, by preserving the fast convergence rate of particle swarm optimization (PSO), the quantum-behaved PSO employing the cooperative method (CQPSO) is proposed to save computation time and to conquer the curse of dimensionality. Maximization of the measure of separability on the basis of between-classes variance method (often called the OTSU method), which is a popular thresholding technique, is employed to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. The experimental results show that, compared with the existing population-based thresholding methods, the proposed PSO algorithm gets more effective and efficient results. It also shortens the computation time of the traditional OTSU method. Therefore, it can be applied in complex image processing such as automatic target recognition.

Real-time image segmentation based on a parallel and pipelined watershed algorithm

The watershed transformation is a popular image segmentation technique for gray scale images. This paper describes a real-time image segmentation based on a parallel and pipelined watershed algorithm which is designed for hardware implementation. In our algorithm: (1) pixels in a given image are repeatedly scanned from top-left to bottom-right, and then from bottom-right to top-left, in order to achieve high performance on a pipelined circuit by simplifying memory access sequences, (2) all steps in the algorithm are executed at the same time in the pipelined circuit, (3) the amount of data that are scanned is gradually reduced as the calculation progresses by memorizing which data are modified in the previous scan, and (4) N pixels can be processed in parallel. In our current implementation on an off-the-shelf field-programmable gate array board, up to four pixels can be processed in parallel. The performance for 512 × 512 pixel images is fast enough to be the first step in real-time applications.