Region-based fit of color homogeneity measures for fuzzy image segmentation

In this paper we introduce an approach to automatically select a homogeneity measure for color image segmentation, on the basis of the characteristics of the region to be segmented. In a previous work we presented a fuzzy color path-based image segmentation proposal where membership degrees were computed from the connectivity between pixels, based on the homogeneity degree of the path joining them. To measure homogeneity, we aggregate resemblances between consecutive pixels using t-norms. Since a great variety of homogeneity measures can be found, we need to automatically select a suitable t-norm for a given region. For this purpose we firstly approximate a value characterizing the region surrounding the seed, studying a set of fixed paths. Secondly, we establish a functional relationship between this value and the parameter of a Weber t-norm. Based on this functional relationship we obtain the value of t-norm’s parameter, corresponding to the homogeneity measure to be used in the segmentation process. We show that our approach performs well in different types of regions. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.