Hybrid color image segmentation using 2D histogram clustering and region merging

An hybrid segmentation method for color images is presented in this work. It combines 2D histogram clustering to produce segmentation maps fused together providing an initial unsupervised clustering of the dominant colors of the image. Region information is then used and a novel technique is introduced to simplify the Region Adjacency Graph by merging candidate regions until the stabilization of a ”good” segmentation criterion. Merged regions are refined by a color watershed using local and global properties of the image. The robustness of the method is experimentally verified and the color space influence is studied.

[1]  George Economou,et al.  A GRAPH THEORY APPROACH FOR AUTOMATIC SEGMENTATION OF COLOR IMAGES , 2001 .

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

[3]  Hubert Cardot,et al.  Histogram and Watershed Based Segmentation of Color Images , 2002, CGIV.

[4]  Paola Campadelli,et al.  Color image segmentation using Hopfield networks , 1997, Image Vis. Comput..

[5]  Jack-Gérard Postaire,et al.  Cluster Analysis by Binary Morphology , 1993, IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell..

[6]  David García,et al.  Extensive operators in partition lattices for image sequence analysis , 1998, Signal Process..

[7]  Jean Serra,et al.  Image Analysis and Mathematical Morphology , 1983 .

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

[9]  Josef Kittler,et al.  Automatic watershed segmentation of randomly textured color images , 1997, IEEE Trans. Image Process..

[10]  Sang Uk Lee,et al.  Color image segmentation based on 3-D clustering: morphological approach , 1998, Pattern Recognit..

[11]  F. Meyer,et al.  Color image segmentation , 1992 .

[12]  A Elmoataz,et al.  Generalized region growing operator with optimal scanning: application to segmentation of breast cancer images , 1997, Journal of microscopy.

[13]  Mehmet Celenk,et al.  A color clustering technique for image segmentation , 1990, Comput. Vis. Graph. Image Process..

[14]  Paola Campadelli,et al.  Quantitative evaluation of color image segmentation results , 1998, Pattern Recognit. Lett..

[15]  Pierre-Yves Strub,et al.  Color image segmentation based on automatic morphological clustering , 2001, Proceedings 2001 International Conference on Image Processing (Cat. No.01CH37205).

[16]  Bülent Sankur,et al.  Color image segmentation using histogram multithresholding and fusion , 2001, Image Vis. Comput..

[17]  Marinette Revenu,et al.  A color morphological segmentation , 2000 .

[18]  Yee-Hong Yang,et al.  Multiresolution Color Image Segmentation , 1994, IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell..

[19]  Philippe Salembier,et al.  Binary partition tree as an efficient representation for image processing, segmentation, and information retrieval , 2000, IEEE Trans. Image Process..

[20]  Didier Zugaj,et al.  A new approach of color images segmentation based on fusing region and edge segmentations outputs , 1998, Pattern Recognit..

[21]  Luc Vincent,et al.  Watersheds in Digital Spaces: An Efficient Algorithm Based on Immersion Simulations , 1991, IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell..

[22]  Kari Saarinen.  Color image segmentation by a watershed algorithm and region adjacency graph processing , 1994, Proceedings of 1st International Conference on Image Processing.

[23]  Pierre Soille,et al.  Morphological partitioning of multispectral images , 1996, J. Electronic Imaging.

[24]  Silvano Di Zenzo,et al.  A note on the gradient of a multi-image , 1986, Comput. Vis. Graph. Image Process..

[25]  Alain Trémeau,et al.  A region growing and merging algorithm to color segmentation , 1997, Pattern Recognit..