An efficient watershed algorithm based on connected components

In this paper, a formal de"nition and a new algorithmic technique for the watershed transformation is presented. The novelty of the approach is to adapt the connected component operator to solve the watershed segmentation problem. The resulting algorithm is independent of the number of grey-levels, employs simple data structures, requires less error prone memory management, and issues a lower complexity and a short running time. However, the algorithm does not modify the principle of the watershed segmentation; the output result is the same as that of using any traditional algorithm which does not build watershed lines. ! 2000 Pattern Recognition Society. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.