UCSC-CRL-02-38: UCSC-CRL-02-38

Bryan J Mealy
12/12/2002 09:00 AM
Computer Engineering
Despite the Watershed Transform's (WST) tendency to over-segment, it has become a widely used method to segment images. In most published SWT applications, gradient magnitude thresholding (GMT) is applied as a method to control WST over-segmentation. GMT is relatively fast and simple and reduces WST region count without losing importing eds information in the original image. Region reduction via GMT, however, is confined to smooth areas of the image. In this paper we present a new method to control WST over-segmentation in non-smooth image areas The term marklet refers to a regional minima in the gradient image comprising of one pixel. Region count is reduces when two adjoining marklets are combined to form a single marker. Two different types of MCFs and are described. We demonstrate the ability of the MCF to control WST over-segmentation without compromising shape information in the original image.

The results show that the number of regions in the partitioned images are significantly reduced by applying MCF. These results are presented after a GMT application with a modest threshold value. The results also show that important edge information from the original image is preserved. Both qualitative and quantitative results are provided.

UCSC-CRL-02-38