Color image segmentation: advances and prospects

Image segmentation is very essential and critical to image processing and pattern recognition. This survey provides a summary of color image segmentation techniques available now. Basically, color segmentation approaches are based on monochrome segmentation approaches operating in di!erent color spaces. Therefore, we "rst discuss the major segmentation approaches for segmenting monochrome images: histogram thresholding, characteristic feature clustering, edge detection, region-based methods, fuzzy techniques, neural networks, etc.; then review some major color representation methods and their advantages/disadvantages; "nally summarize the color image segmentation techniques using di!erent color representations. The usage of color models for image segmentation is also discussed. Some novel approaches such as fuzzy method and physics-based method are investigated as well. 2001 Pattern Recognition Society. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.