Color image segmentation: a novel spatial fuzzy genetic algorithm

Image segmentation is a very important low-level vision task. It is the perceptual grouping of pixels based on some similarity criteria. In this article, we have applied spatial fuzzy genetic algorithm (SFGA) for the unsupervised segmentation of color images. The SFGA adds diversity to the search process to find the global optima. The performance of SFGA is influenced by two factors: first, K number of clusters—should be known in advance; second, the initialization of the cluster centers. To overcome these issues, a progressive technique based on self-organizing map is presented to find out the optimal K number of clusters automatically. To handle the initialization problem, peaks are identified using the image color histograms. The genetic algorithm with fuzzy behavior maximizes the fuzzy separation and minimizes the global compactness among the segments. The segmentation is performed on wavelet transform image which not only reduces the dimensionality and computational cost but also makes more compact segments. A novel pruning technique is proposed to handle the problem of over-segmentation. The results show that the proposed technique outperforms state-of-the-art methods.     

融合对称特性的混合标签传递半监督直觉模糊聚类图像分割

现有的直觉模糊聚类算法应用于图像分割时,往往只考虑图像的像素信息,忽略了图像的几何特征和区域信息,使得分割效果不太理想。为了提高直觉模糊聚类算法的分割性能,提出一种融合对称特性的混合标签传递半监督直觉模糊聚类算法。该算法首先对图像进行对称轴检测获取图像的对称特性,接着利用图像的对称特性进行对称像素的标签传递并改进像素对聚类中心的直觉模糊距离测度,然后设计一种混合标签传递半监督策略,对所有像素进行隶属度的估计并将其作为监督隶属度进行引入,随后构建融合对称特性的混合标签传递半监督直觉模糊聚类目标函数,通过聚类获得最终的分割结果。两个彩色图像库上的实验结果表明,该算法能够将目标从复杂背景中完整的分割出来,分割性能优于对比算法。      

Localizing text in scene images by boundary clustering, stroke segmentation, and string fragment classification

In this paper, we propose a novel framework to extract text regions from scene images with complex backgrounds and multiple text appearances. This framework consists of three main steps: boundary clustering (BC), stroke segmentation, and string fragment classification. In BC, we propose a new bigram-color-uniformity-based method to model both text and attachment surface, and cluster edge pixels based on color pairs and spatial positions into boundary layers. Then, stroke segmentation is performed at each boundary layer by color assignment to extract character candidates. We propose two algorithms to combine the structural analysis of text stroke with color assignment and filter out background interferences. Further, we design a robust string fragment classification based on Gabor-based text features. The features are obtained from feature maps of gradient, stroke distribution, and stroke width. The proposed framework of text localization is evaluated on scene images, born-digital images, broadcast video images, and images of handheld objects captured by blind persons. Experimental results on respective datasets demonstrate that the framework outperforms state-of-the-art localization algorithms.     

Detection and Segmentation of Concealed Objects in Terahertz Images

Terahertz imaging makes it possible to acquire images of objects concealed underneath clothing by measuring the radiometric temperatures of different objects on a human subject. The goal of this work is to automatically detect and segment concealed objects in broadband 0.1–1 THz images. Due to the inherent physical properties of passive terahertz imaging and associated hardware, images have poor contrast and low signal to noise ratio. Standard segmentation algorithms are unable to segment or detect concealed objects. Our approach relies on two stages. First, we remove the noise from the image using the anisotropic diffusion algorithm. We then detect the boundaries of the concealed objects. We use a mixture of Gaussian densities to model the distribution of the temperature inside the image. We then evolve curves along the isocontours of the image to identify the concealed objects. We have compared our approach with two state-of-the-art segmentation methods. Both methods fail to identify the concealed objects, while our method accurately detected the objects. In addition, our approach was more accurate than a state-of-the-art supervised image segmentation algorithm that required that the concealed objects be already identified. Our approach is completely unsupervised and could work in real-time on dedicated hardware.      

A novel fuzzy clustering algorithm with non local adaptive spatial constraint for image segmentation

Generalized fuzzy c-means clustering algorithm with improved fuzzy partitions (GIFP_FCM) is a novel fuzzy clustering algorithm. However when GIFP_FCM is applied to image segmentation, it is sensitive to noise in the image because of ignoring the spatial information contained in the pixels. In order to solve this problem, a novel fuzzy clustering algorithm with non local adaptive spatial constraint (FCA_NLASC) is proposed in this paper. In the proposed method, a novel non local adaptive spatial constraint term is introduced to modify the objective function of GIFP_FCM. The characteristic of this technique is that the adaptive spatial parameter for each pixel is designed to make the non local spatial information of each pixel playing a different role in guiding the noisy image segmentation. Segmentation experiments on synthetic and real images, especially magnetic resonance (MR) images, are performed to assess the performance of an FCA_NLASC in comparison with GIFP_FCM and fuzzy c-means clustering algorithms with local spatial constraint. Experimental results show that the proposed method is robust to noise in the image and more effective than the comparative algorithms.     

基于互补空间信息的多目标进化聚类图像分割

现有的多目标进化聚类算法应用于图像分割时,没有考虑图像的任何空间信息,使得该类算法在含噪图像上的分割性能不理想。该文鉴于图像的局部空间信息和非局部空间信息的互补性,试图将这两种空间信息同时引入到聚类有效性函数中,构造了融合互补空间信息的目标函数,进而提出了应用于图像分割的基于互补空间信息的多目标进化聚类算法。该算法采用染色体可变长编码策略在进化过程中自动确定图像分割数目,减少了人为干预。自然图像的分割实验表明,该算法不但能在含噪图像上取得较为满意的分割性能,而且适用于多种类型的含噪图像。     

基于清晰度的彩色图像分割改进算法

针对K-means算法不能很好的分割目标较小,且目标颜色不能明显区别于背景颜色的彩色图像等缺点,提出了一种基于清晰度的彩色图像分割算法(S-K-means)。该算法引入图像清晰度评价理论,将彩色图像R、G、B三个通道的灰度矩阵转换成清晰度矩阵,然后选用Lab彩色空间,最后进行K均值聚类。为验证算法的有效性,对多幅电力线图像进行了分割实验,并与其他的分割方法进行比较实验,给出了详细的理论分析。实验结果表明该算法效果好,对电力系统中高压巡线具有参考价值,且具有较高的使用价值。     

Foreground text segmentation in complex color document images using Gabor filters

Extraction of foreground contents in complex background document images is very difficult as background texture, color and foreground font, size, color, tilt are not known in advance. In this work, we propose a RGB color model for the input of complex color document images. An algorithm to detect the text regions using Gabor filters followed by extraction of text using color feature luminance is developed too. The proposed approach consists of three stages. Based on the Gabor features, the candidate image segments containing text are detected in stage-1. Because of complex background, certain amount of high frequency non-text objects in the background are also detected as text objects in stage-1. In stage-2, certain amount of false text objects is dropped by performing the connected component analysis. In stage-3, the image segments containing textual information, which are obtained from the previous stage are binarized to extract the foreground text. The color feature luminance is extracted from the input color document image. The threshold value is derived automatically using this color feature. The proposed approach handles both printed and handwritten color document images with foreground text in any color, font, size and orientation. For experimental evaluations, we have considered a variety of document images having non-uniform/uniform textured and multicolored background. Performance of segmentation of foreground text is evaluated on a commercially available OCR. Evaluation results show better recognition accuracy of foreground characters in the processed document images against unprocessed document images.     

Infrared image segmentation algorithm based on distribution information intuitionistic fuzzy c-means clustering

Due to the sensitivity of the traditional intuitionistic fuzzy c-means (IFCM) clustering algorithm to the clustering center in image segmentation,which resulted in the low clustering precision,poor retention of details,and large time complexity,an intuitionistic fuzzy c-means clustering algorithm was proposed based on spatial distribution information suitable for infrared image segmentation of power equipment.The non-target objects with high intensity and the non-uniformity of image intensity in the infrared image had strong interference to the image segmentation,which could be effectively suppressed by the proposed algorithm.Firstly,the Gaussian model was introduced into the global spatial distribution information of power equipment to improve the IFCM algorithm.Secondly,the membership function was optimized by local spatial operator to solve the problem of edge blur and image intensity inhomogeneity.The experiments conducted on Terravic motion IR database and the data set containing 300 infrared images of power equipment show that,the relative region error rate is about 10% and is less affected by the change of fuzzy factor m.The effectiveness and applicability of the proposed algorithm are superior to other comparison algorithms.     

融合改进FT显著性与Grabcut的图像目标分割算法

针对目前复杂度较大的图像中目标分割速度较慢、显著性边界分割不明确等问题,提出了一种融合改进的FT（Frequency-tuned）显著性检测与Grabcut的图像分割算法。该算法首先通过改进基于频率调谐的FT显著性检测方法得到图像中显著性较高的区域,并利用SLIC（Simple Linear Iterative Clustering）算法对显著图进行预处理得到超像素图,能够有效改善边界的分割效果,然后通过以图论GraphCut算法为基础改进的Grabcut算法建立高斯混合模型。为了提高算法效率,通过聚类以超像素代替原像素,并反复迭代高斯混合模型（Gaussian Mixed Model,GMM）参数,最后利用最大流最小割算法得到最优目标分割结果。实验结果表明所提算法能够更准确更高效率地分割图像中的显著性目标,对高分辨率图像也有很好的适用效果,相比于其他算法在分割精度上提高10%左右,并具有较高的分割效率。     

Combined morphological-spectral unsupervised image segmentation.

The goal of segmentation is to partition an image into disjoint regions, in a manner consistent with human perception of the content. For unsupervised segmentation of general images, however, there is the competing requirement not to make prior assumptions about the scene. Here, a two-stage method for general image segmentation is proposed, which is capable of processing both textured and nontextured objects in a meaningful fashion. The first stage extracts texture features from the subbands of the dual-tree complex wavelet transform. Oriented median filtering is employed, to circumvent the problem of texture feature response at step edges in the image. From the processed feature images, a perceptual gradient function is synthesised, whose watershed transform provides an initial segmentation. The second stage of the algorithm groups together these primitive regions into meaningful objects. To achieve this, a novel spectral clustering technique is proposed, which introduces the weighted mean cut cost function for graph partitioning. The ability of the proposed algorithm to generalize across a variety of image types is demonstrated.     

Automatic liver and lesion segmentation: a primary step in diagnosis of liver diseases

Computed Tomography (CT) images are widely used for diagnosis of liver diseases and volume measurement for liver surgery and transplantation. Segmentation of liver and lesion is regarded as a major primary step in computer-aided diagnosis of liver diseases. Lesion alone cannot be segmented automatically from the abdominal CT image since there are tissues external to the liver with similar intensity to the lesions. Therefore, it is necessary to segment the liver first so that lesion can then be segmented accurately from it. In this paper, an approach for automatic and effective segmentation of liver and lesion from CT images needed for computer-aided diagnosis of liver is proposed. The method uses confidence connected region growing facilitated by preprocessing and postprocessing functions for automatic segmentation of liver and Alternative Fuzzy C-Means clustering for lesion segmentation. The algorithm is quantitatively evaluated by comparing automatic segmentation results to the manual segmentation results based on volume measurement error, figure of merit, spatial overlap, false positive error, false negative error, and visual overlap.     

A fully unsupervised color textured image segmentation algorithm using weighted mean histograms features

A new integrated feature distribution-based color textured image segmentation algorithm has been proposed. Two novel histogram-based inherent color texture feature extraction methods have been presented. From the histogram features, mean color texture histogram is calculated. Instead of concatenating the feature channels, a multichannel nonparametric Bayesean clustering is employed for primary segmentation. A region homogeneity-based merging algorithm is used for final segmentation. The proposed feature extraction techniques inherently combine color texture features rather then explicitly extracting it. Use of nonparametric Bayesean clustering makes the segmentation framework fully unsupervised where no a priori knowledge about the number of color texture regions is required. The feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method have been demonstrated by various experiments using color textured and natural images. The experimental results reveal that superior segmentation results can be obtained through the proposed unsupervised segmentation framework.     

Application of SVM and its Improved Model in Image Segmentation

In the research and application of images, people are often only interested in the foreground or specific area of the image, so it is necessary to extract the specific area from the image, and image segmentation technology is the key to solving this problem. Aiming at the complex background and the color image with unclear target contour as the target image to be segmented, this paper first uses the texture and color of the image as the feature vector, and proposes an image segmentation algorithm based on SVM. The experimental results show that the segmentation accuracy is 91.23%. Secondly, in order to improve the accuracy of segmentation, the SVM algorithm is improved. The improved SVM algorithm is based on the grid search method to optimize the parameters C and g in the SVM. At the same time, the HIS color channel is added to the feature vector to obtain more Excellent SVM image segmentation model. Finally, the color image segmentation is verified and compared with the standard SVM algorithm. The experimental results show that the accuracy rate of the improved SVM algorithm reaches 97.263%, which improves the segmentation efficiency. It is verified that the improved model proposed in this paper can effectively segment complex color images.

     

A pyramidal image segmentation algorithm

The problem of image segmentation (division into homogeneous regions) basing on color and texture region differences is considered. A two-level hierarchical pyramidal segmentation algorithm is proposed for solution of this problem. The homogeneity criterion is the estimated adjacency of the image elements and regions in the combined color-texture feature space. A metric in this space is introduced and studied. The results are verified on a set of test images of different types.

     

区域信息驱动的多目标进化半监督模糊聚类图像分割算法

现有的多目标进化聚类算法应用于图像分割时,往往是在图像像素层面上进行聚类,运行时间过长,而且忽略了图像区域信息使得图像分割效果不太理想。为了提高多目标进化聚类算法的分割效果和时间效率,该文将图像区域信息与部分监督信息引入多目标进化聚类,提出图像区域信息驱动的多目标进化半监督模糊聚类图像分割算法。该算法首先利用超像素策略获得图像的区域信息,然后结合部分监督信息,设计融合区域信息和监督信息的适应度函数,接着通过多目标进化策略对多个适应度函数进行优化得到最优解集。最后构造融合区域信息与监督信息的最优解评价指标,实现从最优解集中选取一个最优解。实验结果表明:与已有多目标进化聚类算法相比,该算法不但分割效果有所提升,而且运行效率得以提高。     

基于克隆选择和多重空间构造的彩色图像分割

该文提出一种基于克隆选择和多重空间构造的彩色图像分割方法。该方法首先将一些常见的颜色分量分为亮度成分、单频光谱成分、双频光谱成分、多频光谱成分,利用主分量分析技术(PCA)分别对其进行计算,得到最具有识别能力的颜色分量来构造多重颜色空间;然后利用克隆选择算法对样本进行自学习,得到全局最优的聚类中心;最后用得到的聚类中心对图像进行分割。由于该文的方法结合了克隆选择算法的非线性分类能力,通过对彩色图像自适应的构造最佳多重空间,能够快速准确地得到分割结果,克服了传统分割方法使用固定颜色空间以及容易陷入局部最优的缺点。通过实验表明,该方法对彩色图像同质区的分割均匀,边缘保持度好。此外,新方法对彩色图像的亮度和纹理变化不敏感,鲁棒性较强。     

Interactive object segmentation from multi-view images

Despite the great progress on interactive image segmentation, image co-segmentation, 2D and 3D segmentation, there is still no workable solution to the problem: given a set of calibrated or un-calibrated multi-view images (say, more than 40 images), by interactively cutting 3 ～ 4 images, can the foreground object of the rest images be quickly cutout automatically and accurately? In this paper, we propose a non-trivial engineering solution to this problem. Our basic idea is to integrate 3D segmentation with 2D segmentation so as to combine their advantages. Our proposed system iteratively performs 2D and 3D segmentation, where the 3D segmentation results are used to initialize 2D segmentation and ensure the silhouette consistency among different views and the 2D segmentation results are used to provide more accurate cues for the 3D segmentation. The experimental results show that the proposed system is able to generate highly accurate segmentation results, even for some challenging real-world multi-view image sequences, with a small amount of user input.     

基于自组织映射网络的图像分割算法

针对K—Means图像聚类分割算法需要预先知道图像分割数,且对初始聚类中心较为敏感等问题,提出了一种基于SOFM（自组织特征映射网络）的图像聚类分割算法。该算法结合SOFM聚类及合并聚类分析,能够自动确定分割块数并得到有效的K-Means初始聚类中心。实验结果表明该算法具有运行效率高、分割效果好等优点,在实际应用中是可行的。     

A multiresolution image segmentation technique based on pyramidalsegmentation and fuzzy clustering

In this paper, an unsupervised image segmentation technique is presented, which combines pyramidal image segmentation with the fuzzy c-means clustering algorithm. Each layer of the pyramid is split into a number of regions by a root labeling technique, and then fuzzy c-means is used to merge the regions of the layer with the highest image resolution. A cluster validity functional is used to find the optimal number of objects automatically. Segmentation of a number of synthetic as well as clinical images is illustrated and two fully automatic segmentation approaches are evaluated, which determine the left ventricular volume (LV) in 140 cardiovascular magnetic resonance (MR) images. First fuzzy c-means is applied without pyramids. In the second approach the regions generated by pyramidal segmentation are merged by fuzzy c-means. The correlation coefficients of manually and automatically defined LV lumen of all 140 and 20 end-diastolic images were equal to 0.86 and 0.79, respectively, when images were segmented with fuzzy c-means alone. These coefficients increased to 0.90 and 0.93 when the pyramidal segmentation was combined with fuzzy c-means. This method can be applied to any dimensional representation and at any resolution level of an image series. The evaluation study shows good performance in detecting LV lumen in MR images.