Histogram thresholding (mode method) |
Requires that the histogram of an image has a number of peaks, each corresponds to a region |
It does not need a prior information of the image. |
(1) Does not work well for an image without any obvious peaks or with broad and flat valleys |
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For a wide class of images satisfying the requirement, this method works very well with low computation complexity |
(2) Does not consider the spatial details, so cannot guarantee that the segmented regions are contiguous |
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Feature space clustering |
Assumes that each region in the image forms a separate cluster in the feature space. Can be generally broken into two steps: (1) categorize the points in the feature space into clusters; (2) map the clusters back to the spatial domain to form separate regions |
Straightforward for classification and easy for implementation |
(1) How to determine the number of clusters (known as cluster validity) |
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(2) Features are often image dependent and how to select features so as to obtain satisfactory segmentation results remains unclear |
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(3) Does not utilize spatial information |
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Region-based approaches |
Group pixels into homogeneous regions. Including region growing, region splitting, region merging or their combination |
Work best when the region homogeneity criterion is easy to define. They are also more noise immune than edge detection approach |
(1) Are by nature sequential and quite expensive both in computational time and memory |
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(2) Region growing has inherent dependence on the selection of seed region and the order in which pixels and regions are examined |
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(3) The resulting segments by region splitting appear too square due to the splitting scheme |
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Edge detection approaches |
Based on the detection of discontinuity, normally tries to locate points with more or less abrupt changes in gray level. Usually classified into two categories: sequential and parallel |
Edge detecting technique is the way in which human perceives objects and works well for images having good contrast between regions |
(1) Does not work well with images in which the edges are ill-defined or there are too many edges |
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(2) It is not a trivial job to produce a closed curve or boundary |
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(3) Less immune to noise than other techniques, e.g., thresholding and clustering |
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Fuzzy approaches |
Apply fuzzy operators, properties, mathematics, and inference rules (IF– THEN rules), provide a way to handle the uncertainty inherent in a variety of problems due to ambiguity rather than randomness |
Fuzzy membership function can be used to represent the degree of some properties or linguistic phrase, and fuzzy IF–THEN rules can be used to perform approximate inference |
(1) The determination of fuzzy membership is not a trivial job |
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(2) The computation involved in fuzzy approaches could be intensive |
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Neural network approaches |
Using neural networks to perform classification or clustering |
No need to write complicated programs. Can fully utilize the parallel nature of neural networks |
(1) Training time is long |
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(2) Initialization may affect the results |
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(3) Overtraining should be avoided |