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An automatic image segmentation algorithm involving shortest path basins

  • Representation, Processing, Analysis and Understanding of Images
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Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Image segmentation is a process of partitioning input image into meaningful regions. It is a challenging task that is involved in almost every image processing system. Currently lot of methods for image segmentation with different approaches was created. Between all of them the methods based on graph theory are more and more popular nowadays. Segmentation methods could be classified for example to interactive and automatic ones. The further class of methods benefits from a user interaction that provides valuable information about a segmentation problem. The later class of methods doesn’t incorporate any user interaction. Nevertheless fully automatic methods that are both precise and robust are still hard to find. In this paper a new method based on shortest path in a graph is presented. This method automatically places seed points that are further used for image segmentation in the sense of path basins. This method allows segment an input image to a predefined or to an undefined number of image segments. Derived seed points could also be used in other interactive methods instead of a user interaction. Experiments with this method show its potential for segmenting a general class of images.

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Authors and Affiliations

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Correspondence to T. Ryba.

Additional information

This paper uses the materials of a report that was submitted at the 11th International Conference Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis: New Information Technologies that was held in Samara, Russia on September 23–28, 2013.

The article is published in the original.

Tomas Ryba was born in 1985 in Plzen, Czech Republic. He received his M.S. degree in Cybernetics from the University of West Bohemia (UWB), Plzen, Czech Republic in 2009. As a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Cybernetics, UWB, his research interests focus on medical imaging and image segmentation. He is also a teaching assistant at UWB.

Milos Zelezny was born in Plzen, Czech Republic, in 1971. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Cybernetics from the University of West Bohemia, Plzen, Czech Republic (UWB) in 1994 and in 2002 respectively. Since 2012 he is an associate professor at the UWB. He has been delivering lectures on Digital Image Processing, Structural Pattern Recognition and Remote Sensing since 1996. He is working in projects on multi modal humen-computer speech interfaces and computer vision.

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Ryba, T., Zelezny, M. An automatic image segmentation algorithm involving shortest path basins. Pattern Recognit. Image Anal. 25, 89–95 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1134/S1054661815010162

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1134/S1054661815010162

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