Segmentation (image processing)

In computer vision, image segmentation is the process of partitioning a digital image into multiple segments (sets of pixels, also known as super-pixels). The goal of segmentation is to simplify and/or change the representation of an image into something that is more meaningful and easier to analyze. Image segmentation is typically used to locate objects and boundaries (lines, curves, etc.) in images. More precisely, image segmentation is the process of assigning a label to every pixel in an image such that pixels with the same label share certain characteristics.

The result of image segmentation is a set of segments that collectively cover the entire image, or a set of contours extracted from the image (see edge detection). Each of the pixels in a region are similar with respect to some characteristic or computed property, such as color, intensity, or texture. Adjacent regions are significantly different with respect to the same characteristic(s). When applied to a stack of images, typical in medical imaging, the resulting contours after image segmentation can be used to create 3D reconstructions with the help of interpolation algorithms like Marching cubes.

Some of the practical applications of image segmentation are:

Several general-purpose algorithms and techniques have been developed for image segmentation. To be useful, these techniques must typically be combined with a domain's specific knowledge in order to effectively solve the domain's segmentation problems.

The simplest method of image segmentation is called the thresholding method. This method is based on a clip-level (or a threshold value) to turn a gray-scale image into a binary image. There is also a balanced histogram thresholding.

The key of this method is to select the threshold value (or values when multiple-levels are selected). Several popular methods are used in industry including the maximum entropy method, Otsu's method (maximum variance), and k-means clustering.

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