Hybrid Image Segmentation using Discerner Cluster in FCM and Histogram Thresholding
This is an incremental improvement for image processing researchers, focusing on automating threshold selection in segmentation.
The paper tackles image segmentation by proposing a hybrid approach that combines fuzzy c-means clustering with histogram thresholding to automatically find a discerner cluster for thresholding, achieving segmentation results on standard test images.
Image thresholding has played an important role in image segmentation. This paper presents a hybrid approach for image segmentation based on the thresholding by fuzzy c-means (THFCM) algorithm for image segmentation. The goal of the proposed approach is to find a discerner cluster able to find an automatic threshold. The algorithm is formulated by applying the standard FCM clustering algorithm to the frequencies (y-values) on the smoothed histogram. Hence, the frequencies of an image can be used instead of the conventional whole data of image. The cluster that has the highest peak which represents the maximum frequency in the image histogram will play as an excellent role in determining a discerner cluster to the grey level image. Then, the pixels belong to the discerner cluster represent an object in the gray level histogram while the other clusters represent a background. Experimental results with standard test images have been obtained through the proposed approach (THFCM).