An Evolved Image Segmentation Technique for

Gradient Detection and Outside Markers

Fahad Al Ghazali1
1
Computer Engineering Department, Center for Advanced Studies in Engineering, Pakistan
CASE, G-5/1 , Islamabad
1
fahadghazali@cesat.gov.pk

Abstract— In this paper, an evolved image segmentation
technique is presented, which incorporates watershed
segmentation and a modified graph based segmentation
technique. The presented algorithm successfully solves the
inability of watershed transforms to segment regions having
gradually changing gray level shades or segments having
granularity in their outlook. Furthermore, the algorithm also
paints inside outside markers on most prominent regions which
reduce over-segmentation, which is another observed problem
with watershed technique. The algorithm has been simulated and
tested using MATLAB code and it has been shown in this paper,
that the proposed algorithm reduces the above mentioned
problems in watershed technique. The applications of this
algorithm can be in all the fields related to image segmentation.
Keywords— Watersheds, Image segmentation, granularity,
gradient, markers
smoothed version of the gradient magnitude image (which
also makes it usable with colour images). This ends up finding
smooth regions separated by visible (higher gradient)
boundaries. Since such boundaries are what active contours
usually follow, pre-computing such a segmentation using
either watershed or the related tobogganing technique is often
used in active contour algorithms as in [3]. Unfortunately,
watershed segmentation associates a unique region with each
local minimum, which can lead to over-segmentation, [4].
Watershed segmentation is therefore often used as part of an
interactive system, where the user first marks seed locations
(with a click or a short stroke) that correspond to the centres
of different desired components. Fig. 1 shows the results of
images after going through watershed transformation.

I. INTRODUCTION
Region based segmentation is a very powerful concept for
region based image segmentation.
A. Region Based Segmentation
Region segmentation is the task of finding groups of pixels
that “go together”. In statistics, this problem is known as
cluster analysis and is a widely studied area with hundreds of
different algorithms. In computer vision, image segmentation
is one of the oldest and most widely studied problems. Early
techniques tend to use region splitting or merging, which
correspond to divisive and agglomerative algorithms in the
clustering literature. More recent algorithms often optimize
some global criterion, such as intra-region consistency and
inter-region boundary lengths or dissimilarity as in [1].
B. Watershed
A technique related to thresholding, since it operates on a
grayscale image, is watershed computation [2]. This technique
segments an image into several catchment basins, which are
the regions of an image (interpreted as a height field or
landscape) where rain would flow into the same lake. An
efficient way to compute such regions is to start flooding the
landscape at all of the local minima and to label ridges
wherever different evolving components meet. The whole
algorithm can be implemented using a priority queue of pixels
and breadth-first search [2]
Since images rarely have dark regions separated by lighter
ridges, watershed segmentation is usually applied to a
Fig. 1 a)The original image of famous cameraman.tif b)The
cameraman.tif after watershed transformation, it can be observed that it has
been over-segmented and the background is not identifiable
Furthermore, if there is an image region, in which there is
continuous change in shades of gray levels, just like a gradient
textured image, the watershed is observed to be unable to
detect it as an independent segment. Similarly, as the
watershed works on immersion of topographic image through
water, it is also unable to properly detect the objects, which
have granulated colour or outlook. It means that, when an
object has a colour which has all gray levels randomly
distributed over its body, the watershed also finds it hard to
declare it as an independent region. This remains the case, no
matter how much granulated, the coloured object is
distinguishable from its vicinity through human visual system.
One way can be to pass the image through the averaging filter,
as it would subdue the object’s granular shade. Even after this
modification in procedure, it has been observed that,
watershed technique doesn’t declare it as an independent
segment. Fig.2 illustrates this problem. Here we have an
image with 3 distinct regions. On the left side, we have a
region in which the shade of the region is continuously
decreasing. Then, there is a second region in the right, within,
which there is a region that possesses a shade, which is
continuously and randomly varying. Human visual system
easily distinguishes, that there are three regions in this image,
but it has been a great challenge for computer vision
algorithms.
Fig. 2 a) The original showing three distinct regions with one segment
having continuous shade, the other with granular shade b)The image after
passing through watershed transformation technique
C. Graph-based Segmentation
While many merging algorithms simply apply a fixed rule to
group pixels and regions together, [1] present a merging
algorithm that uses relative dissimilarities between regions to
determine which ones should be merged, which produces an
algorithm that provably optimizes a global grouping metric.
They start with a pixel-to-pixel dissimilarity measure w(e)
such as intensity differences between N8 neighbors.
(Alternatively, they also use the joint feature space distances
introduced by Comaniciu and Meer, [5]). In the proposed
algorithm, this approach of finding relative dissimilarities
between regions is taken and modified such that it not only
counts on dissimilarities, but also on the relative and sufficient
similarities of adjacent regions to give finalized version of
segmented image.
II. WATERSHED TRANSFORM CONCEPTS & TERMINOLOGIES
In the watershed transform, the starting point of the
algorithm is taken as the topographic interpretation of the
image, which is a 3-D graph, with x and y coordinates of the
image placed on the horizontal plane and in the vertical
direction, corresponding intensity levels of the image are
plotted. In this way, we get an interpretation in which high
intensity values of the images can be observed in terms of
peaks. The low intensity values can be observed in terms of
valleys and the pixels with intermediate intensities can be
viewed as slopes to the peaks. This is quite an efficient way of
observing image such that we can have an idea of the image’s
gradients as well. The whole watershed technique is based on
the immersion or flooding of this artificial landscape in water,
which is followed by detection of edges and regions which
survive this flooding. Here, the total points can be divided into
three main categories. a)Points belonging to a regional
minimum. b) The catchment basins which are the points at
which a drop of water, if placed at any of those locations,
would fall to a single minimum. c) Watershed lines will be
combination of points at which water will be equally likely to
fall to more than one such minimum. Once these points are
found, the decisions of regions are made utilizing
computations based on neighbourhood connectivity and
sorting. The mathematical details of this algorithm are
provided in [2] & [4].
III. THE PROPOSED ALGORITHM
In this part, the proposed sequence of algorithm is
presented in detail. In the first step, the image I(x,y) is taken
as an input to the algorithm. The image is first passed through
Laplacian and averaging filters. Laplacian filter is a very
efficient technique for edge detection as it highlights and
segments parts which have high gradient. The averaging or
mean filter is applied to reduce noisy part of the image and to
smooth out the parts of the images which have high granular
shade. Then this image ILM(x,y) obtained after passing the
original image through laplacian and averaging filters is
given to watershed transform. The watershed transformed
image is in a form which shows the proposed edges in low
gray scale levels. The watershed transformed image Iw(x,y) is
then thresholded in order to give clear edge points, i.e. the
edge points which depict boundaries of objects and have gray
scale level of zero. This thresholded image is now Iw_th(x,y)
The resultant image from the previous transformations
Iw(x,y) are processed through the proposed algorithm. In this
algorithm the edge points from Iw_th(x,y)are extracted and
stored in an array edge_points[n,2], in which n is the number
of edge points and are number of rows in the array. The
second order ‘2’ is the number of columns of the array and
store x and y coordinates of the edge points. The array
edge_points[n,2] is used for the analysis of the original input
image I(x,y) again. From the original image I(x,y), the
grayscale levels of the pixel points, pointed by
edge_points[n,2] are taken. Finally, the whole of the image is
scanned again at each location pointed by
edge_points[n,2]and a vicinity check is performed. This
vicinity check inspects that whether the pixel points lying
adjacent to the edge_points[n,2], declared by the first part of
the algorithm, have sufficient intensity differences with
neighbouring pixels or not. For each of the edge_points[i,2],if
the difference
*edge_points[i(1),i(2)]-*edge_points[i(1)-1,i(2)-1] 
 
is found to be less than a threshold value, the edge_points[n,2]
are modified to new coordinate values. Otherwise, the
edge_points[n,2]. This process is repeated for every single of
the edge points.
IV. THE FLOWCHART OF THE ALGORITHM
Fig.3 depicts the steps involved in the proposed algorithm
 Image Pixel Vales at
Edge Points

Application of
Laplacian and Subtraction of the pixel
Averaging Filter values at edge points and
the pixel values at their
neighbouring pixels
Watershed
Transformation

Thresholding of Difference
>Threshold
the Watershed Value
Fig. 5 a) Image b) After Watershed c) After Proposed
Transformed algorithm
No
image Yes
Similarly, the proposed algorithm performs in the same
Maintain Edge Points manner with the cameraman.tif shown in Fig.1. Fig. 6 depicts
Edge Points that how the proposed algorithm is able to distinguish the
Update Edge Points camera rods, along with the background and sketches a
marker around the boundary of the cameraman.

Fig. 3 The Flowchart of the algorithm

V. RESULTS
The results show that the proposed algorithm is able to
detect distinct segments of images which have grayscale
levels which are constantly and continuously changing, as
well as those which have granular colours. Moreover, the
proposed algorithm reduces the effect of over segmentation
such that the resultant image possesses a distinct marker like
structure around prominent and foreground objects. Fig. 4 Fig. 6 a) The cameraman Image b) After processing
shows the results of the image shown in fig. 2 after processed through the proposed algorithm
by the proposed algorithm. It can be observed that the
algorithm successfully differentiates the three segments in the VI. CONCLUSIONS
image. The algorithm presented in this paper gives the intended
results quite efficiently, however, the algorithm is to be tested
with large number of images to prove its use for medical
images as well. Further changes in the algorithm on hit and
trial basis can be performed to remove tiny grains from the
result images which appear around the judged edges.

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