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At present, there are many semantic segmentation algorithms with excellent performance for intelligent driving vehicles, but most of them only work well on scenes with good illumination. In order to solve the problem of scene segmentation under low illumination, this paper proposes a novel semantic segmentation algorithm that combines visible and infrared images. In this algorithm, two parallel encoders are designed as the input of the images, and the decoder divides the fused images output from the encoder. The model is based on ResNet algorithm, and the residual attention module is used in each branch to mine and enhance the spatial features of multilevel channels to extract images information. Experiments are carried out on publicly available thermal infrared and visible datasets. The results show that the algorithm proposed in this paper is superior to the algorithm using only visible images in semantic segmentation of traffic environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aquila optimizer (AO) is an efficient meta-heuristic optimization method, which mimics the hunting style of Aquila in nature. However, the AO algorithm may suffer from immature convergence during the exploitation stage. In this paper, two strategies are elegantly employed into conventional AO, such as random opposition-based learning and nonlinear flexible jumping factor, which can efficiently enhance the performance of conventional AO. Experiments on 1 7 benchmark functions and image segmentation demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. Comparison with several state-of-the-art meta-heuristic optimization techniques indicates the efficacy of the developed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, an efficient interactive image segmentation method based on maximization of submodular function under user's scribble constraint is presented. The problem of interactive image segmentation is formulated as the maximum entropy rate under user's constraints. The objective function is submodular, and we solve the constrained submodular function maximization by incorporating a new data structure and some aggregating rules into the greedy algorithm. The main steps of our algorithm are as follows. First, the pixels scribbled by the user are clustered separately as target foreground and background clusters. Second, in the process of greedy algorithm, unscribbled pixels are aggregated to the corresponding target cluster according to the proposed aggregating rules. Finally, the segmentation result is presented by the two target clusters. The experiments and comparisons on three standard benchmarks show that our method has good performance. Our method is straightforward and efficient, and the time complexity of our method is between linear and polynomial. Furthermore, we analyze the influence of different scribbles, and propose some optimal scribble strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the haze weather, the outdoor image quality is degraded, which reduces the image contrast, thereby reducing the efficiency of computer vision systems such as target recognition. There are two aspects of the traditional algorithm based on the principle of dark channel to be improved. First, the restored images obviously contain color distortion in the sky region. Second, the white regions in the scene easily affect the atmospheric light estimated. To solve the above problems, this paper proposes a single-image dehazing and image segmentation method via dark channel prior (DCP) and adaptive threshold. The sky region of hazing image is relatively bright, so sky region does not meet the DCP. The sky part is separated by the adaptive threshold, then the scenery and the sky area are dehazed, respectively. In order to avoid the interference caused by white objects to the estimation of atmospheric light, we estimate the value of atmospheric light using the separated area of the sky. The algorithm in this paper makes up for the shortcoming that the algorithm based on the DCP cannot effectively process the hazing image with sky region, avoiding the effect of white objects on estimating atmospheric light. Experimental results show the feasibility and effectiveness of the improved algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The classical image segmentation algorithm based on local adaptive threshold can effectively segment images with uneven illumination, but with the increase of the image data, the real-time problem gradually emerges. In this paper, a quantum segmentation algorithm based on local adaptive threshold for NEQR image is proposed, which can use quantum mechanism to simultaneously compute local thresholds for all pixels in a gray-scale image and quickly segment the image into a binary image. In addition, several quantum circuit units, including median calculation, quantum binarization, etc. are designed in detail, and then a complete quantum circuit is designed to segment NEQR images by using fewer qubits and quantum gates. For a 2 n × 2 n image with q gray-scale levels, the complexity of our algorithm can be reduced to O (n 2 + q) , which is an exponential speedup compared to the classic counterparts. Finally, the experiment is conducted on IBM Q to show the feasibility of our algorithm in the noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Threshold segmentation has been widely used in recent years due to its simplicity and efficiency. The method of segmenting images by the two-dimensional maximum entropy is a species of the useful technique of threshold segmentation. However, the efficiency and stability of this technique are still not ideal and the traditional search algorithm cannot meet the needs of engineering problems. To mitigate the above problem, swarm intelligent optimization algorithms have been employed in this field for searching the optimal threshold vector. An effective technique of lightning attachment procedure optimization (LAPO) algorithm based on a two-dimensional maximum entropy criterion is offered in this paper, and besides, a chaotic strategy is embedded into LAPO to develop a new algorithm named CLAPO. In order to confirm the benefits of the method proposed in this paper, the other seven kinds of competitive algorithms, such as Ant–lion Optimizer (ALO) and Grasshopper Optimization Algorithm (GOA), are compared. Experiments are conducted on four different kinds of images and the simulation results are presented in several indexes (such as computational time, maximum fitness, average fitness, variance of fitness and other indexes) at different threshold levels for each test image. By scrutinizing the results of the experiment, the superiority of the introduced method is demonstrated, which can meet the needs of image segmentation excellently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multilevel thresholding is a basic method in image segmentation. The conventional image multilevel thresholding algorithms are computationally expensive when the number of decomposed segments is high. In this paper, a novel and powerful technique is suggested for Crow Search Algorithm (CSA) devoted to segmentation applications. The main contribution of our work is to adapt Darwinian evolutionary theory with heuristic CSA. First, the population is divided into specified groups and each group tries to find better location in the search space. A policy of encouragement and punishment is set on searching agents to avoid being trapped in the local optimum and premature solutions. Moreover, to increase the convergence rate of the proposed method, a gray-scale map is applied to out-boundary agents. Ten test images are selected to measure the ability of our algorithm, compared with the famous procedure, energy curve method. Two popular entropies i.e. Otsu and Kapur are employed to evaluate the capability of the introduced algorithm. Eight different search algorithms are implemented and compared to the introduced method. The obtained results show that our method, compared with the original CSA, and other heuristic search methods, can extract multi-level thresholding more efficiently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The implication of firefly and fuzzy firefly optimization algorithms has been greatly witnessed in clustering techniques and extensively used in applications such as Image segmentation. Parameters such as step factor and attractiveness have been kept constant in these algorithms, which affect the convergence rate and accuracy of the clustering process. Though fuzzy adaptive firefly algorithm tackled this problem by making those parameters an adaptive one, issues such as low convergence rate, and provision of non-optimal solutions are still there. To tackle these issues, this paper proposed a novel fuzzy adaptive fuzzy firefly algorithm that significantly improves the accuracy and convergence rate while comparing with the existing optimization algorithms. Further, the proposed algorithm fused with existing hybrid clustering algorithms involving fuzzy set, intuitionistic fuzzy set, and rough set resulted in eight novel hybrid clustering algorithms which lead to better performance in optimizing the selection of initial centroids. To validate the proposal, experimental studies have been conducted on datasets found in bench-marking data repositories such as UCI, and Kaggle. The performance and accuracy evaluation of proposed algorithms have been carried out with the aid of seven accuracy measures. Results clearly indicate the improved accuracy and convergence rate of the proposed algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Image segmentation is a prime operation to understand the content of images. Multilevel thresholding is applied in image segmentation because of its speed and accuracy. In this paper, a novel multilevel thresholding algorithm based on Cuckoo search (CS) is introduced. One of the major drawbacks of metaheuristic algorithms is the stagnation phenomenon which leads to a fall into local optimums and premature convergence. To overcome this shortcoming, the idea of Darwinian theory is incorporated with CS algorithm to increase the diversity and quality of the individuals without decreasing the convergence speed of CS algorithm. A policy of encouragement and punishment is considered to lead searching agents in the search space and reduce the computational time. The algorithm is implemented based on dividing the population into specified groups and each group tries to find a better location. Ten test images are selected to verify the ability of our algorithm using the famous energy curve method. Two popular entropies criteria, Otsu and Kapur, are employed to evaluate the capability of the introduced algorithm. Eight different search algorithms are also implemented and compared with our method. Experimental results manifest that DCS is a powerful tool for multilevel thresholding and the obtained results outperform the CS algorithm and other heuristic search methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent times, there has been a tremendous progress in image dehazing for computer vision applications, while the sky region processed by these algorithms tends to degrade by noise and color distortion. In this paper, an improved dark channel prior algorithm is proposed which detects the sky region first and divides the image into sky region and non-sky region and then estimates the transmission of two parts separately, followed by combining with refining step. The proposed algorithm also accurately corrects the transmission of the sky region to avoid noise and color distortion. Experimental results show a greater quality improvement in the output images than the existing strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) trained on the pixel-level annotated images have achieved improvements in semantic segmentation. Due to the high cost of labeling training data, their applications may have great limitation. However, weakly supervised segmentation approaches can significantly reduce human labeling efforts. In this paper, we introduce a new framework to generate high-quality initial pixel-level annotations. By using a hierarchical image segmentation algorithm to predict the boundary map, we select the optimal scale of high-quality hierarchies. In the initialization step, scribble annotations and the saliency map are combined to construct a graphic model over the optimal scale segmentation. By solving the minimal cut problem, it can spread information from scribbles to unmarked regions. In the training process, the segmentation network is trained by using the initial pixel-level annotations. To iteratively optimize the segmentation, we use a graphical model to refine segmentation masks and retrain the segmentation network to get more precise pixel-level annotations. The experimental results on Pascal VOC 2012 dataset demonstrate that the proposed framework outperforms most of weakly supervised semantic segmentation methods and achieves the state-of-the-art performance, which is 6 9. 3 % mIoU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The one-dimensional Otsu method is an adaptive threshold method. It obtains the optimal threshold for image segmentation by the maximum between-class variance, without considering the minimum within-class variance. As the background of water surface image is mostly uniform, using this feature, the threshold selection tactics adopt the combination of the one-dimensional Otsu method and the uniformity measurement, proposes the threshold segmentation method based on uniformity measurement, and adopts the performance evaluation method based on GT image to compare the segmentation result. Experimental results demonstrate that effectiveness of the improved Otsu method is generally better than the traditional Otsu method, and the other four commonly used threshold segmentation methods for the water surface image, which improves the segmentation accuracy of such images and reduces the segmentation error rate. At the same time, as the water surface image is usually affected by light intensity, water ripple and other factors, this paper also adopts the relevant correction algorithm to further improve the segmentation accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a robust variational segmentation model capable of overcoming the problem of the negative effects of outliers. The proposed method is based on the combination of the characteristics of the generalized mean with the concept of the active contours. The optimization problem raising in this combination employs a power method technique. We demonstrate the performance of the proposed model on a series of sample images from diverse modalities and show an outperforming proposed model in comparison with the state-of-the-art methods. The proposed method shows better or equivalent performance in terms of accuracy and robustness than the conventional state-of-the-art models. The validation of the efficiency of the proposed two-phase algorithm is further extended to vector-valued images and multi-phase formulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kernel methods are a class of algorithms for pattern analysis to robust them to noise, overlaps, outliers and also unequal sized clusters. In this paper, kernel-based fuzzy c-means (KFCM) method is extended to apply KFCM on any crisp and non-crisp input numbers only in a single structure. The proposed vectorized KFCM (VKFM) algorithm maps the input (crisp or non-crisp) features to crisp ones and applies the KFCM (with prototypes in feature space) on them. Finally the resulted crisp prototypes in the mapped space are influenced by an inverse mapping to obtain the prototypes' (centers') parameters in the input features space. The performance of the proposed method has been compared with the conventional FCM and KFCM and other new methods, to show its effectiveness in clustering of gene expression data and segmentation of land-cover using satellite images. Simulation results show good accuracy of proposed method in compare to other methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brain tumor segmentation from magnetic resonance (MR) image is vital for both the diagnosis and treatment of brain cancers. To alleviate noise sensitivity and improve stability of segmentation, an effective hybrid clustering algorithm combined with fast guided filter is proposed for brain tumor segmentation in this paper. Preprocessing is performed using adaptive Wiener filtering combined with a fast guided filter. Then simple linear iterative clustering (SLIC) is utilized for pre-segmentation to effectively remove scatter. During the clustering, K-means + + and Gaussian kernel-based fuzzy C-means (K + + GKFCM) clustering algorithm are combined to segment, and the fast-guided filter is introduced into the clustering. The proposed algorithm not only improves the robustness of the algorithm to noise, but also improves the stability of the segmentation. In addition, the proposed algorithm is compared with other current segmentation algorithms. The results show that the proposed algorithm performs better in terms of accuracy, sensitivity, specificity and recall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hierarchical image segmentation provides a region-oriented scale-space, i.e. a set of image segmentations at different detail levels in which the segmentations at finer levels are nested with respect to those at coarser levels. However, most image segmentation algorithms, among which a graph-based image segmentation method relying on a region merging criterion was proposed by Felzenszwalb–Huttenlocher in 2004, do not lead to a hierarchy. In order to cope with a demand for hierarchical segmentation, Guimarães et al. proposed in 2012 a method for hierarchizing the popular Felzenszwalb–Huttenlocher method, without providing an algorithm to compute the proposed hierarchy. This paper is devoted to providing a series of algorithms to compute the result of this hierarchical graph-based image segmentation method efficiently, based mainly on two ideas: optimal dissimilarity measuring and incremental update of the hierarchical structure. Experiments show that, for an image of size 321 × 481 pixels, the most efficient algorithm produces the result in half a second whereas the most naive one requires more than 4 h. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we proposed a novel method for text line segmentation of Tibetan historical document image with uchen script based on contour tracking. Our method is mainly to segment the text lines from the image documents using the contour curve of the text lines, which consists of three parts: First, we calculate the barycentre coordinates of the connected components for the text regions, and then the barycentre of each text line is connected in order, so that the main part of each text line is connected and a new connected component is formed; then the contour curve of the connected component is obtained using the contour tracing algorithm; Second, the contour curve and the barycentre gravity are used to assign key elements (such as the syllable point, the upper vowel, the lower vowel, and the broken strokes and so on) of the text lines, and next the candidate text lines are obtained based on these connected components; Finally, the contour tracking algorithm is used to calculate the contour curve of the candidate text lines and segment the text lines. We evaluated our text line segmentation method on the 200 document image data sets. Experimental results show that the proposed method based on contour curve tracing can accurately segment the text lines of image documents and achieve the encouraging results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The traditional Gaussian mixture background model failed to build a reasonable background in complex scenarios, so this paper proposes an improved self-adaptive Gaussian mixture background modeling which integrates the difference method and adaptive threshold segmentation to improve the traditional one. In the proposed model, the difference method is applied to achieve the segmentation of changing area and background area, and different weight update policies are used for different areas. Background area updates background model with a fixed update rate. The changing region is divided into moving target area and background show area with the fusion of adaptive threshold; the background show area has a large update rate, allowing the previously obscured parts to recover rapidly; the moving target area won't build new Gaussian components for the Gaussian mixture model. Experiments show that the video sequence algorithm with uncertainties of building background model has good adaptability. It helps to improve computing speed to a large extent and it can also respond to the change of the actual scene quickly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Region of interest (ROI) is the most important part of an image that expresses the effective content of the image. Extracting regions of interest from images accurately and efficiently can reduce computational complexity and is essential for image analysis and understanding. In order to achieve the automatic extraction of regions of interest and obtain more accurate regions of interest, this paper proposes Optimized Automatic Seeded Region Growing (OASRG) algorithm. The algorithm uses the affinity propagation (AP) clustering algorithm to extract the seeds automatically, and optimizes the traditional region growing algorithm by regrowing strategy to obtain the regions of interest where target objects are contained. Experimental results show that our algorithm can automatically locate seeds and produce results as good as traditional region growing with seeds selected manually. Furthermore, the precision is improved and the extraction effect is better after the optimization with regrowing strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose an effective framework to automatically segment hard exudates (HEs) in fundus images. Our framework is based on a coarse-to-fine strategy, as we first get a coarse result allowed of some negative samples, then eliminate the negative samples step by step. In our framework, we make the most of the multi-channel information by employing a boosted soft segmentation algorithm. Additionally, we develop a multi-scale background subtraction method to obtain the coarse segmentation result. After subtracting the optical disc (OD) region from the coarse result, the HEs are extracted by a SVM classifier. The main contributions of this paper are: (1) propose an efficient and robust framework for automatic HEs segmentation; (2) present a boosted soft segmentation algorithm to combine multi-channel information; (3) employ a double ring filter to segment and adjust the OD region. We perform our experiments on the pubic DIARETDB1 dateset, which consists of 89 fundus images. The performance of our algorithm is assessed on both lesion-based criterion and image-based criterion. Our experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is very effective and robust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contours and segments of objects in digital images have many important applications. Contour extractions of gray images can be converted into contour extractions of binary images. This paper presents a novel contour-extraction algorithm for binary images and provides a deduction theory for this algorithm. First, we discuss the method used to construct convex hulls of regions of objects. The contour of an object evolves from a convex polygon until the exact boundary is obtained. Second, the projection methods from lines to objects are studied, in which, a polygon iteration method is presented using linear projection. The result of the iter-ation is the contour of the object region. Lastly, addressing the problem that direct projections probably cannot find correct projection points, an effective discrete ray-projection method is presented. Comparisons with other contour deformation algorithms show that the algorithm in the present paper is very robust with respect to the shapes of the object regions. Numerical tests show that time consumption is primarily concentrated on convex hull computation, and the implementation efficiency of the program can satisfy the requirement of interactive operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In document image analysis (DIA) especially in handwritten document recognition, standard databases play significant roles for evaluating performances of algorithms and comparing results obtained by different groups of researchers. The field of DIA regard to Indo-Persian documents is still at its infancy compared to Latin script-based documents; as such standard datasets are not still available in literature. This paper is an effort towards alleviating this gap. In this paper, an unconstrained handwritten dataset containing documents of Persian, Bangla, Oriya and Kannada (PBOK) is introduced. The PBOK contains 707 text-pages written in four different languages (Persian, Bangla, Oriya and Kannada) by 436 individuals. Total number of text-lines, words/subwords and characters are 12,565, 104,541 and 423,980, respectively. In most documents of PBOK dataset contain either an overlapping or a touching text-lines. The average number of text-lines in text-pages of the PBOK dataset is 18. Two types of ground truths, based on pixels information and content information, are generated for the dataset. Because of such ground truths, the PBOK dataset can be utilized in many areas of document image processing e.g. text-line segmentation, word segmentation and word recognition. To provide an insight for other researches, recent text-line segmentation results on this dataset are also reported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate segmentation of human brain image is an essential step for clinical study of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) images. However, vagueness and other ambiguity present between the brain tissues boundaries can lead to improper segmentation. Possibilistic fuzzy c-means (PFCM) algorithm is the hybridization of fuzzy c-means (FCM) and possibilistic c-means (PCM) algorithms which overcomes the problem of noise in the FCM algorithm and coincident clusters problem in the PCM algorithm. A major challenge posed in the PFCM algorithm for segmentation of ill-defined MRI image with noise is to take into account the ambiguity in the final localization of the feature vectors due to lack of qualitative information. This may lead to improper assignment of membership (typicality) value to their desired cluster. In this paper, we have proposed the possibilistic intuitionistic fuzzy c-means (PIFCM) algorithm for Atanassov's intuitionistic fuzzy sets (A-IFS) which includes the advantages of the PCM, FCM algorithms and A-IFS. Real and simulated MRI brain images are segmented to show the superiority of the proposed PIFCM algorithm. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm yields better result. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In document image processing, arc segmentation plays an important role in vectorization and graphic recognition. Moreover, the unsatisfactory results of several recent arc segmentation contests indicate that conventional methods are inadequate. This paper proposes a new arc segmentation algorithm called SymCAve (an acronym for Symmetry axis, Circle fitting and Average distribution points). First, we locate several seed points and adopt three strategies to ensure that the seed points are proper; then we calculate the center and radius utilizing the seed points. Second, the coordinates of the center and radius are adjusted by employing symmetry axes. Third, the average distribution points method is used to verify whether the points on the circumference are all black pixels. It is a complete circle if all of the points are black pixels. Otherwise, it is a partial circle if some of the points are black pixels and are continuous. Based on this information, the start and end angles of the partial circle can be determined. Finally, these arcs are verified to ensure that the results are accurate. Images and the evaluation tool were obtained from the GREC Workshop's Arc Segmentation contests, to test the systematic performance of the SymCAve algorithm. The experiments demonstrate that the proposed method can provide promising results. However, the algorithm has some drawbacks: it cannot detect a line with width of one pixel, small angles, and any large radius arcs. It is suited for segmenting images with appropriate symmetry axes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a self-directed method for image segmentation using a modified top-down region dividing (TDRD) approach. The TDRD-based image segmentation method solves some of the issues with histogram and region growing-based segmentation techniques. The process is efficient and achieves proper results without over segmentation or spatial-structure destruction. In this paper, we examine seven user-defined parameters of the method. These parameters are converted from human inputs to values derived from in-class information created by the algorithm allowing for autonomous image segmentation, without the need of human input or feedback. Our new autonomous implementation also reduces the computational complexity of the algorithm. This reduction will produce significant savings for the total number of computations the algorithm needs to perform image segmentation. Experimental results show that the images using these new derived values yield superior results as compared to other methods, including the original TDRD method. We compare our results visually and numerically based on the within-class standard deviation (WCSD) and the number of connected components (NCC). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present a passive-blind scheme for detection of frame duplication forgery in videos. The scheme is a coarse-to-fine approach that is implemented in four stages: candidate segment selection, spatial similarity measurement, frame duplication classification, and post-processing. To screen and select duplicated candidates in the temporal domain, the histogram difference of two adjacent frames in the RGB color space is adopted as a feature. Then, to evaluate the similarity of two images, we use a block-based algorithm to measure the spatial correlation between the candidate segment and the corresponding frame in the query template. Based on the results of spatial and temporal analysis, we construct a classifier to detect duplicated clips. In addition, to deal with the partial detection problem, we develop a post-processing technique that examines and merges two adjacent detected candidates into a com-plete duplicated video clip. Our experiment results demonstrate that the proposed scheme can not only achieve detection of frame duplication forgery but also accurately detect and localize duplicated clips in different kinds of videos. The results also show that the scheme outperforms an existing method in terms of precision, recall, accuracy, and computation time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper, proposes a novel approach for feature extraction based on the segmentation and morphological alteration of handwritten multi-lingual characters. We explored multi-resolution and multi-directional transforms such as wavelet, curvelet and ridgelet transform to extract classifying features of handwritten multi-lingual images. Evaluating the pros and cons of each multi-resolution algorithm has been discussed and resolved that Curvelet-based features extraction is most promising for multi-lingual character recognition. We have also applied some morphological operation such as thinning and thickening then feature level fusion is performed in order to create robust feature vector for classification. The classification is performed with K-nearest neighbor (K-NN) and support vector machine (SVM) classifier with their relative performance. We experiment with our in-house dataset, compiled in our lab by more than 50 personnel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a novel cosegmentation algorithm based on active contour model which utilizes local and global image statistics. Many localized region-based active contour models have been proposed to solve a challenging problem of the property (such as intensity, color, texture, etc.) inhomogeneities that often occurs in real images, but these models usually cannot reasonably evolve the curve in this situation that some center points along the curve are in homogeneous regions and their local regions are far away from the object. In order to overcome the difficulties we selectively enlarge the driven force of some points and introduce the edge indicator function to avoid the curve over-shrinking or over-expanding on the salient boundaries. In addition, we introduce global image statistics to better the curve evolution and try to avoid the given energy functional converging to a local minimum. Practical experiments show that our algorithm can obtain better segmentation results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the neural progenitor cells in a time-lapse microscopic sequence are analyzed to find position, shape, motility, and ancestor of each cell in the frame. Because of the complex nature of cells, the ability to distinguish a cell from the background of an image for automatic quantification remains a challenging task. By using morphological techniques, the blob-like objects are selected. The cells are detected using h-maxima transform and the cell contours are selected using watershed algorithm. The cells between image sequences are tracked using multiple matching object method based on modified Mahalanobis algorithm. The proposed method has been successfully applied to a large number of images and showed promising results for tracking cells between consecutive images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a novel approach to frequency segmentation using wavelet decomposition of pseudo-motion image. In this way, a fixed image is translated such that a sequence of moving images is produced, which are called the 0 pseudo-motion images. In fact, we can consider the translation of a function to be a motion of eyeshot. When a function is translated, its wavelet coefficients will oscillate. From this property, we can detect the special areas of the image. Some experiments were conducted, which are used to find the position of license plates of vehicles in digital images. The experimental results demonstrate the performance of the method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Image segmentation is an important component in image processing, pattern recognition and computer vision. Many segmentation algorithms have been proposed. However, segmentation methods for both noisy and noise-free images have not been studied in much detail. Neutrosophic set (NS), a part of neutrosophy theory, studies the origin, nature, and scope of neutralities, as well as their interaction with different ideational spectra. However, neutrosophic set needs to be specified and clarified from a technical point of view for a given application or field to demonstrate its usefulness. In this paper, we apply neutrosophic set and define some operations. Neutrosphic set is integrated with an improved fuzzy c-means method and employed for image segmentation. A new operation, α-mean operation, is proposed to reduce the set indeterminacy. An improved fuzzy c-means (IFCM) is proposed based on neutrosophic set. The computation of membership and the convergence criterion of clustering are redefined accordingly. We have conducted experiments on a variety of images. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach can segment images accurately and effectively. Especially, it can segment the clean images and the images having different gray levels and complex objects, which is the most difficult task for image segmentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Breast cancer occurs in over 8% of women during their lifetime, and is the leading cause of death among women. Sonography is superior to mammography because it has the ability to detect focal abnormalities in the dense breasts and has no side-effect. In this paper, we propose a novel automatic segmentation algorithm based on the characteristics of breast tissue and eliminating particle swarm optimization (EPSO) clustering analysis. The characteristics of mammary gland in breast ultrasound (BUS) images are analyzed and utilized, and a method based on step-down threshold technique is employed to locate the mammary gland area. The EPSO clustering algorithm utilizes the idea of "survival of the superior and weeding out the inferior". The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach can segment BUS image with high accuracy and low computational time. The EPSO clustering method reduces the computational time by 32.75% compared with the standard PSO clustering algorithm. The proposed approach would find wide applications in automatic lesion classification and computer aided diagnosis (CAD) systems of breast cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many algorithms for applications such as pattern recognition, computer vision, and computer graphics seek to compute actual optimal paths in weighted directed graphs. The standard approach for reporting an actual optimal path is based on building a single-source optimal path tree. A technique by Chen et al.2 was given for a class of problems such that a single actual optimal path can be reported without maintaining any single-source optimal path tree, thus significantly reducing the space bound of those problems with no or little increase in their running time. In this paper, we extend the technique by Chen et al.2 to the generalized problem of reporting many actual optimal paths with different starting and ending vertices in certain directed graphs, and show how this new technique yields improved results on several application problems, such as reconstructing a 3-D surface band bounded by two simple closed curves, finding various constrained segmentation of 2-D medical images, and circular string-to-string correction. We also correct an error in the time/space complexity for the well-cited circular string-to-string correction algorithm12 and give an improved result for this problem. Although the generalized many-path problem seems more difficult than the single-path cases, our algorithms have nearly the same space and time bounds as those of the single-path cases. Our technique is likely to help improve many other optimal paths or dynamic programming algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blood cell classification is widely used in the biomedical research. Appropriate separation between touching and overlapping blood cells is of great importance for the successful classification. In this paper, a novel algorithm based on shape information is proposed for the separation of partially overlapping blood cells. It is motivated by the problem of finding the borders between adjacent blood cells in microscopy images. The algorithm can not only separate the simple touching blood cells, but also large clusters of overlapping blood cells. In addition, this algorithm can be adopted for other applications, where separation between touching and overlapping particles is required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is no parametric formulation of corner, so the conventional Hough transform cannot be employed to detect corners directly. A random corner detection method is developed in this paper based on a new concept "accumulative intersection space" under Monte Carlo scheme. This method transforms the corner detection in the image space into local maxima localization in the accumulative intersection space where the intersections are accumulated by random computations. The proposed algorithm has been demonstrated by both theory and experiments. The proposed algorithm is isotropic, robust to image rotation, insensitive to noise and false corners on diagonal edges. Unlike the other existing contour based corner detection methods, our algorithm can effectively avoid the influence of the edge detectors, such as rounding corners or line interceptions. Extensive comparisons among our approach and the other detectors including Harris operator, Fei Shen and Han Wang detector, Han Wang and Brady detector, Foveated Visual Search method and SIFT feature, have shown the effectiveness of our method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since its advent, the use of digital camera in mobile phones is getting more popular, where information retrieval based on visual appearance of an object is very useful when specific parameters for the object are not known. Though it is well-liked, it needs energy aware algorithms to carry out the various tasks such as segmentation and feature extraction. In this paper, a new energy aware fuzzy color segmentation algorithm is proposed and which has been applied for face segmentation in criminal identification using mobile devices. The criminals in the application are in three classes. They are New Criminal (NC), Suspected Criminal (SC) and Confirmed Criminal (CC). It is basically a mobile image-based content search engine that takes photographs of criminals as image queries and finds their relevant contents by matching them to the similar contents in the criminal databases. The energy aware fuzzy color segmentation is used to obtain the most significant parts of an image — facial regions of the persons and which are used in building image-based queries to the databases. Content search methodology in the application is also improved through the fuzzy modeling to make the application more flexible and simpler. Through the experiment conducted, it has been found that the proposed color segmentation algorithm is more robust and it reduces the computational time in searching process by minimizing the number of false cases. It could detect the faces in the images where the other known algorithms have failed to detect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a new fast one-step codebook design algorithm for vector quantization is proposed for image coding. The algorithm utilizes a fuzzy clustering methodology for best clustering of data vectors in the training space. The codebook design process terminates in just one step so that it is highly computationally efficient as compared to other reported algorithms. To improve the coding efficiency, image blocks are further classified into two classes and a different codebook is designed for each class. The two codebooks are augmented to form one codebook so that there is no need to send class information. Moreover, entropy coding is used to send codevector index to the receiver for further bit rate reduction. Simulation results are presented to show the superior performance of the proposed algorithm in terms of PSNR as compared to the state-of-the-art codebook design algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiscale image analysis has been used successfully in a number of applications to segment image features according to their relative scale. In this paper, we present a new framework for the hierarchical segmentation of gray level image. The proposed scheme comprises a nonlinear scale-space and morphological gradient watersheds. Our aim is to produce a meaningful hierarchy among the objects in the image. The scale-space is based on morphological anisotropic diffusion that uses reconstruction morphological operators. Furthermore, we introduce the method to reconstruct morphological operators and the principle of the dynamics of contours in scale-space that combines scale and contrast information. The performance of the proposed segmentation scheme is presented via experimental results obtained with a wide range of image including natural scenes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The accurate and effective algorithm for segmenting image is very useful in many fields, especially in medical images. In this paper we introduced a novel method that focuses on segmenting the brain MR Image that is important for neural diseases. Because of many noises embedded in the acquiring procedure, such as eddy currents, susceptibility artifacts, rigid body motion and intensity inhomogeneity, segmenting the brain MR image is a difficult work. In this algorithm, we overcame the inhomogeneity shortage, by modifying the objective function by compensating its immediate neighborhood effect using Gaussian smooth method for decreasing the influence of the inhomogeneity and increasing the segmenting accuracy. Using simulate image and clinical MRI data, experiments show that our proposed algorithm is effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a probabilistic algorithm for segmenting and recognizing text embedded in video sequences based on adaptive thresholding using a Bayes filtering method. The algorithm approximates the posterior distribution of segmentation thresholds of video text by a set of weighted samples. The set of samples is initialized by applying a classical segmentation algorithm on the first video frame and further refined by random sampling under a temporal Bayesian framework. This framework allows us to evaluate a text image segmentor on the basis of recognition result instead of visual segmentation result, which is directly relevant to our character recognition task. Results on a database of 6944 images demonstrate the validity of the algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a color image segmentation algorithm and an approach to large-format image segmentation are presented, both focused on breaking down images to semantic objects for object-based multimedia applications. The proposed color image segmentation algorithm performs the segmentation in the combined intensity–texture–position feature space in order to produce connected regions that correspond to the real-life objects shown in the image. A preprocessing stage of conditional image filtering and a modified K-Means-with-connectivity-constraint pixel classification algorithm are used to allow for seamless integration of the different pixel features. Unsupervised operation of the segmentation algorithm is enabled by means of an initial clustering procedure. The large-format image segmentation scheme employs the aforementioned segmentation algorithm, providing an elegant framework for the fast segmentation of relatively large images. In this framework, the segmentation algorithm is applied to reduced versions of the original images, in order to speed-up the completion of the segmentation, resulting in a coarse-grained segmentation mask. The final fine-grained segmentation mask is produced with partial reclassification of the pixels of the original image to the already formed regions, using a Bayes classifier. As shown by experimental evaluation, this novel scheme provides fast segmentation with high perceptual segmentation quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an alternative approach to emotion recognition from the outer lip contour of the subjects. Subjects exhibit their emotions through their facial expressions, and the lip region is segmented from their facial images. A lip contour model has been developed, and the parameters of the model are adapted using differential evolution algorithm to match with the actual outer contour of the lip. An SVM classifier is then employed to classify the emotion of the subject from the parameter set of the subjects' lip contour. The experiment was performed on 50 subjects in the age group 20-30 years, and the worst accuracy in emotion classification is found to be 86%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]