Comparative performance evaluation of segmentation methods based on region growing and division

Up to now there have been reports on a number of comparative evaluations on the capabilities of region segmentation methods which are one part of image segmentation. However, evaluations on the ease of setting the required parameters and their stabilities when these methods are used have not been performed yet. Therefore, in this paper, we will quantitatively stuff the relationships between the parameters and the characteristics (shape and orientation) of the target objects in the image for several representative region segmentation methods, and examine the accuracy of the extraction and parameter stability. The methods dealt with are (1) iterative merging method, (2) a method based on statistical hypothesis test, (3) a heuristic method, (4) a split and merge method, (5) a relative similarity method, and (6) a region- and edge-based method