Adaptive hierarchical image segmentation technique

In the report a technique of multiple adaptive image segmentation is outlined. Three hierarchy-to-hierarchy transforms for primary digital data ordering and filtration are introduced. To optimize the approximation of observed object with image segments the 22 algorithms of sequential segmentation are tested. The required standard deviation value depending on segment number is estimated. The prototypes are reviewed.     

Adaptive image segmentation with distributed behavior-based agents

Presents an autonomous agent-based image segmentation approach. In this approach, a digital image is viewed as a two-dimensional cellular environment which the agents inhabit and attempt to label homogeneous segments. In so doing, the agents rely on some reactive behaviors such as breeding and diffusion. The agents that are successful in finding the pixels of a specific homogeneous segment will breed offspring agents inside their neighboring regions. Hence, the offspring agents will become likely to find more homogeneous-segment pixels. In the mean time, the unsuccessful agents will be inactivated, without further search in the environment     

Adaptive spatial information-theoretic clustering for image segmentation

The incorporation of spatial context into clustering algorithms for image segmentation has recently received a significant amount of attention. Many modified clustering algorithms have been proposed and proven to be effective for image segmentation. In this paper, we propose a different framework for incorporating spatial information with the aim of achieving robust and accurate segmentation in case of mixed noise without using experimentally set parameters based on the original robust information clustering (RIC) algorithm, called adaptive spatial information-theoretic clustering (ASIC) algorithm. The proposed objective function has a new dissimilarity measure, and the weighting factor for neighborhood effect is fully adaptive to the image content. It enhances the smoothness towards piecewise-homogeneous segmentation and reduces the edge blurring effect. Furthermore, a unique characteristic of the new information segmentation algorithm is that it has the capabilities to eliminate outliers at different stages of the ASIC algorithm. These result in improved segmentation result by identifying and relabeling the outliers in a relatively stronger noisy environment. Comprehensive experiments and a new information-theoretic proof are carried out to illustrate that our new algorithm can consistently improve the segmentation result while effectively handles the edge blurring effect. The experimental results with both synthetic and real images demonstrate that the proposed method is effective and robust to mixed noise and the algorithm outperforms other popular spatial clustering variants.     

Adaptive interpolation and segmentation based reversible image watermarking

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Reversible image watermarking schemes are used to protect ownership and copyrights of digital images. This paper proposes a novel reversible image watermarking...     

Adaptive diffusion flow active contours for image segmentation

Gradient vector flow (GVF) active contour model shows good performance at concavity convergence and initialization insensitivity, yet it is susceptible to weak edges as well as deep and narrow concavity. This paper proposes a novel external force, called adaptive diffusion flow (ADF), with adaptive diffusion strategies according to the characteristics of an image region in the parametric active contour model framework for image segmentation. We exploit a harmonic hypersurface minimal functional to substitute smoothness energy term in GVF for alleviating the possible leakage. We make use of the p(x) harmonic maps, in which p(x) ranges from 1 to 2, such that the diffusion process of the flow field can be adjusted adaptively according to image characteristics. We also incorporate an infinity laplacian functional to ADF active contour model to drive the active contours onto deep and narrow concave regions of objects. The experimental results demonstrate that ADF active contour model possesses several good properties, including noise robustness, weak edge preserving and concavity convergence.     

Adaptive k-means clustering algorithm for MR breast image segmentation

Image segmentation is vital for meaningful analysis and interpretation of the medical images. The most popular method for clustering is k-means clustering. This article presents a new approach intended to provide more reliable magnetic resonance (MR) breast image segmentation that is based on adaptation to identify target objects through an optimization methodology that maintains the optimum result during iterations. The proposed approach improves and enhances the effectiveness and efficiency of the traditional k-means clustering algorithm. The performance of the presented approach was evaluated using various tests and different MR breast images. The experimental results demonstrate that the overall accuracy provided by the proposed adaptive k-means approach is superior to the standard k-means clustering technique.     

微分进化的自适应彩色图像阈值分割

针对阈值的选择依赖于经验和试验的问题,提出了结合微分进化算法和二维最大熵算法得到图像自适应阈值的方法。该方法首先利用全局阈值法中的迭代法得到图像的阈值并初次对图像进行分割,然后利用微分进化算法并且结合二维最大熵阈值进行适应度的计算、个体编码、终断条件等计算图像的自适应阈值,最后对测试的图像应用微分进化算法实现对图像的正确分割。采用微分进化算法可以准确地对图像进行分割,是一个比较高效的方法,有效地提升了分割效果。与现有的自适应阈值分割算法相比,本文算法缩短了计算时间。阈值分割不仅可以对灰度图像进行分割,彩色图像也可以用阈值分割。     

Adaptive image segmentation by combining photometric invariantregion and edge information

An adaptive image segmentation scheme is proposed employing the Delaunay triangulation for image splitting. The tessellation grid of the Delaunay triangulation is adapted to the semantics of the image data by combining region and edge information. To achieve robustness against imaging conditions (e.g. shading, shadows, illumination and highlights), photometric invariant similarity measures and edge computation are proposed. Experimental results on synthetic and real images show that the segmentation method is robust to edge orientation, partially weak object boundaries and noisy-but-homogeneous regions. Furthermore, the method is robust, to a large degree, to varying imaging conditions     

融合多颜色空间分量的自适应彩色图像分割

提出了一种新的简单有效的融合多颜色分量的分割方法,首先在六个不同的颜色空间中选择最佳的待分割颜色分量,然后应用直方图和空间模糊C均值（SFCM）技术对不同颜色分量进行自适应初始分割,最后融合分割结果并进行区域合并。利用该算法在Berkeley图像库上进行了大量实验,实验结果表明,与当前一些经典分割算法Mean-shift、FCR、CTM等相比,利用该方法能够获得更好的分割结果以及更优的性能指标。     

Adaptive image segmentation for region-based object retrieval using generalized Hough transform

Finding an object inside a target image by querying multimedia data is desirable, but remains a challenge. The effectiveness of region-based representation for content-based image retrieval is extensively studied in the literature. One common weakness of region-based approaches is that perform detection using low level visual features within the region and the homogeneous image regions have little correspondence to the semantic objects. Thus, the retrieval results are often far from satisfactory. In addition, the performance is significantly affected by consistency in the segmented regions of the target object from the query and database images. Instead of solving these problems independently, this paper proposes region-based object retrieval using the generalized Hough transform (GHT) and adaptive image segmentation. The proposed approach has two phases. First, a learning phase identifies and stores stable parameters for segmenting each database image. In the retrieval phase, the adaptive image segmentation process is also performed to segment a query image into regions for retrieving visual objects inside database images through the GHT with a modified voting scheme to locate the target visual object under a certain affine transformation. The learned parameters make the segmentation results of query and database images more stable and consistent. Computer simulation results show that the proposed method gives good performance in terms of retrieval accuracy, robustness, and execution speed.     

基于归一化割的自适应多阈值图像分割方法

基于图谱理论的图像闽值分割方法是一种基于全局的单阈值分割方法,其对复杂图像的分割效果不明显,而且其采用的权值计算公式中含有两个需手动调整的参数,这些都限制了该算法的通用性.据此提出基于归一化割的自适应多阈值图像分割方法,它通过几个阈值来分割复杂图像,并且采用了一个自适应权值计算公式,提高了该方法的通用性.大量的实验结果表明该方法具有很好的分割效果,可以保留更多的图像细节.     

Adaptive active contour model driven by image data field for image segmentation with flexible initialization

In this paper, a novel adaptive active contour model based on image data field for image segmentation with robust and flexible initializations is proposed. We firstly construct a new external energy term deduced from the image data field that drives the level set function to move in the opposite direction along the boundaries of object and an adaptive length regularization term based on the image local entropy. The designed external energy and length regularization term are then incorporated into a variationlevel set framework with an additional penalizing energy term. Due to the adaptive sign–changing property of the external energy and the adaptive length regularization term, the proposed model can tackle images with clutter background and noise, the level set function can be initialized as any bounded functions (e.g., constant function), which implies the proposed model is robust to initialization of contours. Experimental results on both synthetic and real images from different modalities confirm the effectiveness and competivive performance of the proposed method compared with other representative models.

     

Nonparametric image segmentation

Image segmentation is reduced to quantisation which in tum is reduced to function approximation. The function approximation problem is formulared and solved as a global optimisation problem requiring neither any parametric assumptions nor parametric input, except the number of desired segment classes of the image. These are characterised by different colours or grey values. The quantisation approach is overlayed with an iteration scheme in accordance with the notion of so-called stable extrema of functions. This leads to segmentations of considerable robustness.This work was partially supported by project D 3 (http://www.uni ulm.de/SFB527/Projects/d3.html) of the SFB 527 sponsored by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft     

Variation-based approach to image segmentation Variation-based approach to image segmentation

A new approach to image segmentation is presented using a variation framework. Regarding the edge points as interpolating points and minimizing an energy functional to interpolate a smooth threshold surface it carries out the image segmentation. In order to preserve the edge information of the original image in the threshold surface, without unduly sharping the edge of the image, a non-convex energy functional is adopted. A relaxation algorithm with the property of global convergence, for solving the optimization problem, is proposed by introducing a binary energy. As a result the non-convex optimization problem is transformed into a series of convex optimization problems, and the problem of slow convergence or nonconvergence is solved. The presented method is also tested experimentally. Finally the method of determining the parameters in optimizing is also explored.     

Iterative fuzzy image segmentation

The multispectral signature of features has been used for identification of objects in remotely sensed scenes for a number of years. Recently these techniques have been applied to feature selection in natural scenes. Due to the inherent noise and degradation of the input cues to the algorithms, meaningful image segmentation is a difficult process. In an effort to reduce the sensitivity of a system to these problems, we have been led to the development of a iterative fuzzy clustering technique for image segmentation. It is believed that this method represents an image segmentation scheme which can be used as a preprocessor for a multivalued logic based computer vision system.     

Multiresolution color image segmentation

Image segmentation is the process by which an original image is partitioned into some homogeneous regions. In this paper, a novel multiresolution color image segmentation (MCIS) algorithm which uses Markov random fields (MRF's) is proposed. The proposed approach is a relaxation process that converges to the MAP (maximum a posteriori) estimate of the segmentation. The quadtree structure is used to implement the multiresolution framework, and the simulated annealing technique is employed to control the splitting and merging of nodes so as to minimize an energy function and therefore, maximize the MAP estimate. The multiresolution scheme enables the use of different dissimilarity measures at different resolution levels. Consequently, the proposed algorithm is noise resistant. Since the global clustering information of the image is required in the proposed approach, the scale space filter (SSF) is employed as the first step. The multiresolution approach is used to refine the segmentation. Experimental results of both the synthesized and real images are very encouraging. In order to evaluate experimental results of both synthesized images and real images quantitatively, a new evaluation criterion is proposed and developed     

Advances in image segmentation

Image segmentation is a subfield of image analysis whose potential for applications has stimulated both practical and theoretical research, particularly in the last decade. A selection of papers is reviewed to give an idea of the main lines of attack that are being pursued at present.     

Probabilistic multiscale image segmentation

A method is presented to segment multidimensional images using a multiscale (hyperstack) approach with probabilistic linking. A hyperstack is a voxel-based multiscale data structure whose levels are constructed by convolving the original image with a Gaussian kernel of increasing width. Between voxels at adjacent scale levels, child-parent linkages are established according to a model-directed linkage scheme. In the resulting tree-like data structure, roots are formed to indicate the most plausible locations in scale space where segments in the original image are represented by a single voxel. The final segmentation is obtained by tracing back the linkages for all roots. The present paper deals with probabilistic (or multiparent) linking. The multiparent linkage structure is translated into a list of probabilities that are indicative of which voxels are partial volume voxels and to which extent. Probability maps are generated to visualize the progress of weak linkages in scale space when going from fine to coarser scale. It is demonstrated that probabilistic linking gives a significantly improved segmentation as compared with conventional (single-parent) linking     

用于图像分割的双变异遗传算法

针对遗传算法(GA)收敛结果不稳定、易陷入局部最优解等问题,提出了一种基于全局的改进双变异遗传算法(DMGA),并应用于图像的灰度阈值分割;分析了仿真初始参数对于图像分割结果的影响.实验结果表明:图像分割精度高,效果好,结果可靠,相对于传统GA,DMGA具有更好的全局和局部搜索能力,收敛结果稳定.