A segmentation method based on region information and edge information
Hao Jiang, Hidetomo Suzuki, Jun‐ichiro Toriwaki · Systems and Computers in Japan · 1993
Abstract This paper proposes a segmentation method based on region information and edge information. The method consists of three steps: (1) a connected component which is a part of an object is extracted as a seed by using a simple process such as a histogram analysis; (2) this seed is expanded repeatedly; and (3) to evaluate the possibility of the expansion, the uniformity of gray levels (region information) and checking the presence of border pixels (edge information) are used. Although the method can be considered as a kind of region expansion, the significant features are that it contains the growth of a seed and the edge information (a part of control information) to expand the region repeatedly. The former gives preliminary information on approximate gray levels of an object and extracts the object as a connected component, and the latter makes the edge information more useful. Although the usefulness of the edge information in a conventional region‐and‐edge integrated method such as the superslice algorithm depends greatly on its region segmentation, the use of such methods can be avoided in the proposed method, since both the region and edge information are used simultaneously for the control conditions of the region expansion. The method is justified experimentally by using synthetic images and actual images in two and three dimensions.