An Introduction of Image

Segmentation
主講者 : 陳建齊
 Outline & Content
1. Introduction
2. Thresholding
3. Edge-based segmentation
4. Region-based segmentation
5. conclusion

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 1. Introduction
What is segmentation?

 Three major ways to do.

 Thresholding
 Edge-based segmentation
 Region-based segmentation
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 Thresholding
Finding histogram of gray level intensity.

 Basic Global Thresholding

 Otsu’s Method
 Multiple Threshold
 Variable Thresholding

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 Edge-based segmentation
Using mask to detect edge in image by convolution.

 Basic Edge Detection

 The Marr-Hildreth edge detector(LoG)
 Short response Hilbert transform(SRHLT)
 Watersheds

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 Region-based segmentation
Finding region, but not finding edge.

 Region Growing
 Data Clustering (Hierarchical clustering)
 Partitional clustering
 Cheng-Jin Kuo`s method

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 2. Thresholding
Basic Global Thresholding
1) Select an initial To
2) Segment image use:
g ( x, y )   01 if f(x,y) T
if f(x,y)  T

3) Compute the average intensity

m1
m2
and for the pixels in and .
1
T (m 1  m 2 )
4) Compute a new threshold: 2

5) Until the difference between values of T is smaller than a predefined

parameter.

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 Otsu’s Method
{0,1,2,…,L-1} , L means gray level intensity
 MN  n 0  n 1  n 2 ...  n L 1
M*N is the total number of pixel.
n i denote the number of pixels with intensity i
we select a threshold T (k )  k , 0  k  L  1 , and use it to
classify C : intensity in the range [0, k ] and C : [k  1, L  1]
1 2
k L 1
P (k )   p , P (k )   p  1  P (k )
1 i 2 i 1
i 0 i  k 1
P 1 m 1  P 2 m 2  m G , P 1 + P 2 =1
 = i  m  p , it is global variance.
L 1
2 2
G G i
i 0

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 (m G P 1 (k )  m(k )) 2
  (k )  P 1 P 2 (m1  m 2 ) 
2
B
2
P 1 (k )(1  P 1 (k ))
it is 2between-class variance
  =  B (2k ) , 0   (k *)  1
G
it is a measure of separability between class.
  B2 (k  )  max  B2 (k )
o  k  L 1
 g ( x, y )  1 if f(x,y)  k*
0 if f(x,y)  k*

For x = 0,1,2,…,M-1 and y = 0,1,2…,N-1.

Using image Smoothing/Edge to improve Global
Threshold
Smoothing Edge
detection
What situation is Large object we Small object we
more suitable for the are interested. are interested
method
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 Multiple Threshold
 As Otsu’s method, it takes more area and k*
  2  P (m m ) 2  P (m m ) 2  P (m m ) 2
B 1 1 G 2 2 G 3 3 G
 P 1m1P 2 m 2 P 3 m 3  m G
 P 1 + P 2 +P 3 =1
  B2 (k1* , k2* )  max  B2 (k 1 , k 2 )
o  k 1  k 2  L 1

 2
 (k1* , k2* )  B 1 2 )
( k *
, k *

 G2
Disadvantage: it becomes too complicate when
number of area more than three.

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 Variable Thresholding
1) Image partitioning
.

It is work when the objects of interest and the

background occupy regions of reasonably comparable
size. If not , it will fail.

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2) Variable thresholding based on local image
properties
 Let  xy and m xy denote the standard deviation and
mean value of the set of pixels contained in a
neighborhood, S xy .
 g ( x, y )  10 ifif Q(local
Q(local parameters) is true
parameters) is true

 Q( xy , m xy )   true if f ( x , y )  a
false otherwise
xy ANDf ( x , y ) bm xy

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3) Using moving average
 It discussed is based on computing a moving average
along scan klines
1
of an image.
 m(k  1)  1  z i  m(k )  1 ( z k 1  z k  n )
n i  k  2 n n
 z k 1 denote the intensity of the point at step k+1.
n denote the number of point used in the average.
 m(1)  z 1 / n is the initial value.
 T xy  bm xy ,where b is constant and is the moving
average at point (x,y)

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 3. Edge-based segmentation
Basic Edge Detection
Why we can find edge by difference?
 image
intensity
first-order deviation
second-order deviation
First-order produce
deviation thicker edges

Second-order stronger double-edge Determine edge

deviation response to fine response is from light to
detail dark or dark to
light
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1) Gradient
The image gradient is to find edge strength and direction
at location (x,y) of image.
 f 
 g x   x 
 f  grad( f )      
 g y   f 
 y 

The magnitude (length) of vector , denoted as M(x,y):

mag(f )  g x  g y

The direction of the gradient vector

 g y  is given by the angle:
 ( x, y )  tan 1  
 g x 

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Roberts cross-gradient operators:

Prewitt operator:

Sobel operator:

G ( x, y )   1
0
if R ( x , y ) T
otherwise

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 The Marr-Hildreth edge detector(LoG)
This is second-order deviation, we call Laplacian.

 g ( x, y )  [ 2G ( x, y )]  f ( x, y ) g ( x, y )   2 [G ( x, y )  f ( x, y )]
 Filter the input image with an n*n Gaussian lowpass
filter. 99.7% of the volume under a 2-D Gaussian
surface lies between about the mean. So n  6 .

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 4. Region-based segmentation
Region Growing
Algorithm:
a. Choose a random pixels
b. Use 8-connected and threshold to determine
c. Repeat a and b until almost points are classified.

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Simulation of region growing (90% pixels )
Threshold/second: 20/4.7 seconds.

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 Reference
1. R. C. Gonzalez, R. E. Woods, Digital Image
Processing third edition, Prentice Hall, 2010.
2. C. J. Kuo, J. J. Ding, Anew Compression-Oriented
Fast image Segmentation Technique, NTU,2009.

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