Color image segmentation based on homogram thresholding and region merging

In this paper, a color image segmentation approach based on homogram thresholding and region merging is presented. The homogram considers both the occurrence of the gray levels and the neighboring homogeneity value among pixels. Therefore, it employs both the local and global information. Fuzzy entropy is utilized as a tool to perform homogram analysis for finding all major homogeneous regions at the first stage. Then region merging process is carried out based on color similarity among these regions to avoid oversegmentation. The proposed homogram-based approach (HOB) is compared with the histogram-based approach (HIB). The experimental results demonstrate that the HOB can find homogeneous regions more effectively than HIB does, and can solve the problem of discriminating shading in color images to some extent.