Multithresholding of color and gray-level images through a neural network technique

One of the most frequently used methods in image processing is thresholding. This can be a highly efficient means of aiding the interpretation of images. A new technique suitable for segmenting both gray-level and color images is presented in this paper. The proposed approach is a multithresholding technique implemented by a Principal Component Analyzer (PCA) and a Kohonen Self-Organized Feature Map (SOFM) neural network. To speedup the entire multithresholding algorithm and reduce the memory requirements, a sub-sampling technique can be used. Several experimental and comparative results exhibiting the performance of the proposed technique are presented. q 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

[1]  A. Bovik,et al.  Computational stereo vision using color , 1988, IEEE Control Systems Magazine.

[2]  Srinivasan Parthasarathy,et al.  A color vision system for microelectronics: Application to oxide thickness measurements , 1986, Proceedings. 1986 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[3]  Andrew K. C. Wong,et al.  A new method for gray-level picture thresholding using the entropy of the histogram , 1985, Comput. Vis. Graph. Image Process..

[4]  N. Otsu A threshold selection method from gray level histograms , 1979 .

[5]  Robert M. Haralick,et al.  Automatic multithreshold selection , 1984, Comput. Vis. Graph. Image Process..

[6]  Charalambos Strouthopoulos,et al.  Text identification for document image analysis using a neural network , 1998, Image Vis. Comput..

[7]  S. Hyakin,et al.  Neural Networks: A Comprehensive Foundation , 1994 .

[8]  H. R. Keshavan,et al.  An optimal multiple threshold scheme for image segmentation , 1984, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics.

[9]  A. Constantinides,et al.  Graph—theoretical approach to colour picture segmentation and contour classification , 1993 .

[10]  P.K Sahoo,et al.  A survey of thresholding techniques , 1988, Comput. Vis. Graph. Image Process..

[11]  Raimondo Schettini,et al.  A segmentation algorithm for color images , 1993, Pattern Recognit. Lett..

[12]  Shoji Tominaga A color classification method for color images using a uniform color space , 1990, [1990] Proceedings. 10th International Conference on Pattern Recognition.

[13]  Prasanna K. Sahoo,et al.  Threshold selection using Renyi's entropy , 1997, Pattern Recognit..

[14]  T. Kanade,et al.  Color information for region segmentation , 1980 .

[15]  Nikos Papamarkos,et al.  A New Approach for Multilevel Threshold Selection , 1994, CVGIP Graph. Model. Image Process..

[16]  Ronald W. Schafer,et al.  Multilevel thresholding using edge matching , 1988, Comput. Vis. Graph. Image Process..

[17]  Reiner Lenz,et al.  On Color Edge Detection , 2000, PICS.