Watershed segmentation and region merging

Rui L. V. P. M. Pires; Patrick De Smet; Wilfried Philips

doi:10.1117/12.527256

18 January 2004 Watershed segmentation and region merging

Rui L. V. P. M. Pires, Patrick De Smet, Wilfried Philips

Proceedings Volume 5308, Visual Communications and Image Processing 2004; (2004) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.527256
Event: Electronic Imaging 2004, 2004, San Jose, California, United States

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to present a methodology to generate a partition of an image and a hierarchical region merging scheme to improve the meaningfulness of the segmentation, by reducing excessive object fragmentation. The segmentation method is based on the watershed transform applied to the image gradient magnitude. Prior to the actual segmentation, the image is smoothed to decrease the amount of detail detected by the watershed transform. To further improve the segmentation result, we use an iterative region merging process that uses a graph to represent the image partitions. In this process the most similar pair of adjacent regions is sequentially merged according to a predefined similarity metric. We investigate the use of a combined region merging criterion that takes into account both the intensity similarity and the contrast at the boundary of two adjacent regions. Results obtained illustrate the good combined performance of this segmentation and merging methods and the usefulness of the combined similarity function.

Citation Download Citation

Rui L. V. P. M. Pires, Patrick De Smet, and Wilfried Philips "Watershed segmentation and region merging", Proc. SPIE 5308, Visual Communications and Image Processing 2004, (18 January 2004); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.527256

ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE

INSTITUTIONAL
Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.

SELECT YOUR INSTITUTION

PERSONAL
Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.

PERSONAL SIGN IN

No SPIE Account? Create one

PURCHASE THIS CONTENT

SUBSCRIBE TO DIGITAL LIBRARY

50 downloads per 1-year subscription

Members: $195

Non-members: $335 ADD TO CART

25 downloads per 1 - year subscription

Members: $145

Non-members: $250 ADD TO CART

PURCHASE SINGLE ARTICLE

Includes PDF, HTML & Video, when available