Color image segmentation method and system

The invention discloses a color image segmentation method, which comprises the following steps: processing an image to be segmented into a gray image; extracting a region profile map from the gray image by an Otsu threshold segmentation method, and determining an optimal threshold; taking the optimal threshold as a high threshold of a Canny operator, and extracting an edge map from the gray image by utilizing the Canny operator; and fusing the area profile map and the edge map, and outputting a segmentation result of a color image. The method adopts an operator threshold determining scheme combined with an adaptive strategy and an empirical value and overcomes the defect that an empirical value selecting method has application limitation; the local change intensity of a gray value is obtained through edge detection, so that over-segmentation of avoidable areas is limited; and residual edges are complemented through region segmentation, so that profiles of images after the segmentation are more clear and complete.