Introduction to Computer Vision

(ME-4201)

Segmentation
Phung Thanh Huy
Department of Mechatronics
Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology
Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City
Ver2024.1

Ho Chi Minh City– 2024

Segmentation
Segments
• Image segmentation partitions an image into regions, called segments.
• Purposes: for further image analysis, improved efficiency of image
compression, or just for visualization effects.
• Image segmentation creates segments of connected pixels by analyzing
some similarity criteria.
• Segmentation aims at identifying “meaningful” segments that can be
used for describing the contents of an image, such as a segment for
“background”, segments for “objects”, or particular object categories.

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Segmentation
Segments and segmentation

Image is partitioned into

segments and six segments
of this partition.

The image mapped into a

(nearly binary) image defined
by Winnemöller stylization.
Connected dark or bright
regions define segments

Segmentation of the
image by mean-shift for radii r
= 12 (middle) and r = 24
(right),

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Segmentation
Segments and segmentation

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Segmentation
Segments and segmentation

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Segmentation
Segments and segmentation

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Segmentation by binarization
Intensity Thresholding
Global thresholding Multiple thresholding

• When the value of T changes over an image, we use the term variable
thresholding
• If T depends on the spatial coordinates (x, y) themselves, then variable
thresholding is often referred to as dynamic or adaptive thresholding
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Segmentation by binarization
Intensity Thresholding
• The thresholding results are affected by noise and illumination.

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Segmentation by binarization
Intensity Thresholding
• The thresholding results are affected by noise and illumination.

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Segmentation by binarization
Intensity Thresholding
• Global Thresholding Algorithm

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Segmentation by binarization
Otsu Binarization
Principle: maximizing the between-class variance
• Consider normalized histogram 𝑝𝑖 of an n-bit image. The intensity level: 0 → (2𝑛 − 1).
Let 𝐿 = 2𝑛

• Support 𝑇 𝑘 = 𝑘 is threshold

• The mean intensities

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Segmentation by binarization
Otsu Binarization
• The cumulative mean (average intensity) up to level k

and the average intensity of the entire image (i.e., the global mean)

• The effectiveness of the process is justified by:

• Final result
Find

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Segmentation by binarization
Otsu Binarization

𝑖 0 1 2 … 2𝑛 − 2 2𝑛 − 1
𝑝𝑖
𝑖𝑝𝑖
𝑃1 (𝑘)
𝑚 𝑘 𝑚𝐺
𝜎𝐵2 𝑘 𝜎𝐺2

• Obtain the Otsu threshold, 𝑘 ∗ , as the value of 𝑘 for which 𝜎𝐵2 𝑘 is maximum.
• If the maximum is not unique, obtain k* by averaging the values of k corresponding
to the various maxima detected.

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Segmentation by binarization
Otsu Binarization

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Segmentation by binarization
Improving the binarization
Using image smoothing

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Segmentation by binarization
Improving the binarization
Using Edges

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Segmentation by binarization
Improving the binarization
Using Edges

1. Compute an edge image as either the magnitude of the gradient, or

absolute value of the Laplacian of f(x,y)
2. Specify a threshold value T
3. Threshold the image and produce a binary image, which is used as
a mask image; and select pixels from f(x,y) corresponding to
“strong” edge pixels
4. Compute a histogram using only the chosen pixels in f(x,y)
5. Use the histogram from step 4 to segment f(x,y) globally

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Segmentation by binarization
Multiple Thresholding
• In the case of classes, , , ..., , the between-class variance is:

• The optimum threshold values, 𝑘1∗ , 𝑘2∗ , … , 𝑘𝐾−1

∗
, that maximize

• Thresholding

• Efficiency

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Segmentation by binarization
Multiple Thresholding Region 3 (b)

Region 1 (a)
Region 2 (b)

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Segmentation by binarization
Variable Thresholding Based on Local Image Properties
At each point (x,y), consider a neighborhood 𝑆𝑥𝑦 . Inside the neighborhood area:
Need to choose:
If the background is nearly constant + Neighborhood size.
+a
+b
Global mean

Improvement:

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Segmentation by binarization
Variable Thresholding Based on Moving Averages
• Computing a moving average along scan lines of an image.
• The scanning typically is carried out line by line in a zigzag pattern to reduce
illumination bias
𝑧1
𝑚 1 =
𝑛 n: number of points for
𝑘
1 1 averaging
𝑚 𝑘 = ෍ 𝑧𝑖 = 𝑚 𝑘 − 1 + 𝑧𝑘 − 𝑧𝑘−𝑛+1
𝑛 𝑛
𝑖=𝑘−𝑛+1

Image is padded with (n-1) zeros pixels

n=3

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Segmentation by binarization
Variable Thresholding Based on Moving Averages
• For each point

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Segmentation by binarization
Variable Thresholding Based on Moving Averages

• Thresholding based on moving averages works well when the objects are small with
respect to the image size.
• Quite useful in document processing

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Regional-based Segmentation
Basic Topology and Relationships of Images
Neighbors

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Regional-based Segmentation
Basic Topology and Relationships of Images
Adjacency

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Regional-based Segmentation
Basic Topology and Relationships of Images
Adjacency

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Regional-based Segmentation
Basic Topology and Relationships of Images
Path (Curve)

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Regional-based Segmentation
Basic Topology and Relationships of Images
Connectivity
Let S represent a subset of pixels in an image.
• Two pixels p and q are said to be connected in S if there exists a path between
them consisting entirely of pixels in S.
• For any pixel p in S, the set of pixels that are connected to it in S is called a
connected component of S.
• If it only has one connected component, then set S is called a connect set.
Region
Let R be a subset of pixels in an image.
• R is a region of the image if R is a connected set.
• The boundary (also called border or contour) of a region R is the set of pixels in
the region that have one or more neighbors that are not in R.

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Regional-based Segmentation
Basic Topology and Relationships of Images
Distance

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Regional-based Segmentation
Region Growing
• Region growing is a procedure that groups pixels or subregions into
larger regions.
• The simplest of these approaches is pixel aggregation, which starts
with a set of “seed” points and from these grows regions by
appending to each seed points those neighboring pixels that have
similar properties (such as gray level, texture, color, shape).
• Region growing based techniques are better than the edge-based
techniques in noisy images where edges are difficult to detect.

Example: Region Growing based on 8-connectivity

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