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In this article, we have proposed an image segmentation algorithm FABC, which is a kind of unsupervised classification (clustering), where we combine the concept of artificial bee colony optimization (ABC) and the popular fuzzy C means (FCM) and named it as fuzzy-based ABC or FABC. In FABC, we have used fuzzy membership function to search for optimum cluster centers using ABC. FABC is more efficient than other optimization techniques such as genetic algorithm (GA), particle swarm optimization (PSO) and expectation maximization (EM) algorithms. FABC overcomes the drawbacks of FCM as it does not depend on the choice of initial cluster centers and it performs better in terms of convergency, time complexity, robustness and segmentation accuracy. FABC becomes more efficient as it takes the advantage of the randomized characteristics of ABC for the initialization of the cluster centers. The experiments with FABC, GA, PSO and EM have been done over various grayscale images including some synthetic, medical and texture images, and segmentation of such images is very difficult due to the low contrast, noise and other imaging ambiguities. The efficiency of FABC is proven by both quantitative and qualitative measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]