IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN APPLIED EARTH OBSERVATIONS AND REMOTE SENSING, VOL. 2, NO.
2, JUNE 2009 67
An Efficient Multiscale SRMMHR (Statistical
Region Merging and Minimum Heterogeneity Rule)
Segmentation Method for High-Resolution
Remote Sensing Imagery
Haitao Li, Haiyan Gu, Yanshun Han, and Jinghui Yang
Abstract—Multiscale segmentation is an essential step for higher
level image processing in remote sensing. This paper presents a
new multiscale SRMMHR segmentation method integrating the
advantages of Statistical Region Merging (SRM) for initial seg-
mentation and the Minimum Heterogeneity Rule (MHR) for object
merging. The high-resolution (HR) QuickBird imageries are used
to demonstrate the SRMMHR segmentation method. The SRM
segmentation method not only considers spectral, shape, and scale
information, but also has the ability to cope with significant noise
corruption and handle occlusions. The MHR used for merging ob-
jects takes advantage of its spectral, shape, scale information, and
the local and global information. Compared with the Fractal Net
Evolution Approach (FNEA) that eCognition adopted and SRM
methods, the results show that the proposed method wipes off small
redundant objects existed in traditional SRM methods, avoids the
phenomena where the big homogeneity region has lots of small sim-
ilar regions existed in the FNEA method, and gets more integrated
and accurate objects. Therefore, the proposed SRMMHR segmen-
tation method is an efficient multiscale segmentation method for
HR imagery.
Index Terms—High-resolution (HR) remote sensing imagery,
multiscale segmentation, statistical region merging and minimum
heterogeneity rule (SRMMHR).
I. INTRODUCTION
MAGE segmentation is the process of dividing an image
I into homogenous regions, which is an essential step for
higher level image processing such as image analysis, pattern
recognition, object-based classification, change detection, etc.
[1]–[4]. Burnett et al. (2003) presented a multiscale segmen-
tation/object relationship modeling methodology for landscape
analysis [5]. So far, there are over 1000 kinds of segmenta-
Manuscript received October 03, 2008; revised February 08, 2009. First
published August 11, 2009; current version published September 09, 2009.
This work was supported in part by the Key Laboratory of Geo-informatics
of the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping (No: 200833), in part by the
National High-Tech Research and Development Program of China (863 Pro-
gram: 2007AA12Z151), and in part by the National Basic Research Program
of China (973 Program: 2006CB701303).
The authors are with Institute of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing,
Chinese Academy of Surveying and Mapping, Beijing, 100039, China
(e-mail: lhtao@casm.ac.cn; guhy@casm.ac.cn; hys_han@casm.ac.cn;
jhyang@casm.ac.cn).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JSTARS.2009.2022047
1939-1404/$26.00 © 2009 IEEE
tion approaches have been developed [6]. General segmenta-
tion methods include global behavior-based and local behavior-
based methods [7]. Global behavior-based methods group the
pixels based on the analysis of the data in the feature space. Typ-
ical examples are clustering and histogram threshold. Local be-
havior-based methods analyze the variation of spectral features
in a small neighborhood. Edge detection and region extraction
are two typical examples [8].
However, not all of the segmentation techniques are feasible
for high-resolution (HR) imagery due to the following facts.
1) The complexity and redundancy of the HR imagery are in-
creased obviously because of the multispectral and multi-
scale characteristics of the HR image.
2) The HR imagery provides detailed information such as
spectral, shape, context, and texture. However, the tradi-
tional segmentation algorithm depends on the color infor-
mation and thus cannot provide the satisfying results.
3) Different classes have inherent features at different scales.
For example, we may find forest at coarse scale, while we
may find individual trees or plants at finer scale. So, the
segmentation model at a specific scale needs to be modified
when it is used at other scales.
Therefore, it is important to segment imagery effectively with
all kinds of information and object characteristics because the
multispectral and multiscale HR imageries include more details
and information of the object. Recently, several papers have
proposed multiscale segmentation algorithms for HR imagery
[8]–[11], which are mainly based on region growing methods
taking pixels as seeds and growing the regions around them
based on certain homogeneity criteria. The commercial soft-
ware, eCognition, adopts the Fractal Net Evolution Approach
(FNEA) for segmentation. FNEA is a region growing technique
based on local criteria and starts with one pixel image objects.
Image objects are pairwise merged one by one to form bigger
objects. The merging criterion is that the average heterogeneity
of image objects weighted by their size in pixels should be min-
imized [12], [13].
However, the local region growing technique has some
limitations.
1) It starts the merging process with individual pixels. Besides
the expensive computational cost, the result is very sensi-
tive to the merging order at early stages of the segmenta-
tion when a single pixel still has a considerable weight in
the features of a small region [14].
68 IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN APPLIED EARTH OBSERVATIONS AND REMOTE SENSING, VOL. 2, NO. 2, JUNE 2009
2) It has some difficulties in gathering a set of seeds and an
adequate homogeneity criterion.
3) It depends on the selection of the starting point and the
order in which the pixels and regions are examined.
4) It is hard to find coincident boundary because one pixel
image object merges with another one without considering
adjacent pixels.
Therefore, single pixels can hardly correspond to landscape
objects and the segmentation with single pixels is inconsistent
with the object-oriented approaches (OOA) that overcome the
limitations of pixel-based method applied to HR imagery. In
order to overcome the disadvantages of segmentation based on
one pixel and get more accurate segmentation results, several
papers suggest merging bigger objects generated by initial seg-
mentation, which can avoid the disadvantages of region growing
method from single pixel.
In this paper, we present a multiscale SRMMHR segmenta-
tion method based on both Statistical Region Merging (SRM)
and Minimum Heterogeneity Rule (MHR). The SRM has the
ability to cope with significant noise corruption, handle occlu-
sions, and considers spectral, shape, scale information. The ap-
plication of MHR relies on the effectiveness of local and global
qualities and its consideration of shape and spectral features. We
integrated their advantages by applying SRM for initial fine seg-
mentation and MHR for region merging.
II. MULTISCALE SEGMENTATION BASED ON SRM AND MHR
A. Statistical Region Merging
The SRM algorithm belongs to the family of region growing
techniques with statistical test for region fusion. It is based on a
model of image generation which considers grouping is an in-
ference problem, namely, the observation imagery comes from
the original imagery by sampling, and the segmentation imagery
comes from the observation imagery by regenerating, the homo-
geneity region boundary may defined by simple theorem [15],
[16]. The two key steps of the algorithm are as follows.
1) Ascertain a sort function. According to the size of the func-
tion, the adjacent regions are sorted.
2) Ascertain a merging predicate. The merging predicate de-
cides whether the adjacent regions are merged or not.
It is obvious that sort function and merging predicate are the
basis of the algorithm and they are interactive with each other.
Supposing is an image with pixels that each contains
three values belonging to the set . The
observed imagery is generated by sampling, in particular,
every color level of each pixel of is described by a set of
independent random variables with values of . is a
parameter which quantifies the complexity of the scene, the gen-
erality of the model, and the statistical hardness of the task.
represents the major advantage to be a trade-off parameter that
is adjustable to obtain a compromise between the power of the
model and the quality of the observed results. It is best to choose
a convenient value to keep a powerful enough model while en-
suring reliable estimation on [15]. In , the optimal regions
satisfy the following properties.
1) A homogeneity property: Statistical pixels have the same
expectation value for each channel inside any statistical
region.
2) A separability property: The expectation value of adjacent
regions is different for at least one channel [16].
Nielsen and Nock (2003) consider a sort function defined as
the following:
(1)
where , stand for pixel values of a pair of adjacent pixels of
the channel. Based on the Nielsen and Nock model, we obtain
the following merging predicate:
true if
false otherwise
(2)
where , denotes the ob-
served average for channel in region , stands for the
set of regions with pixels. is a parameter that controls the
coarseness of the segmentation. The smaller is, the bigger the
object size, and the fewer the object numbers. More sort func-
tions and merging predicates could be defined, which could im-
prove the speed and quality of segmentation.
In conclusion, the SRM algorithm is able to capture the main
structural components of imagery by a simple but effective sta-
tistical analysis, and it has the ability to cope with significant
noise corruption, handle occlusions with the sort function, and
perform multiscale segmentation [15]–[17]. However, it has the
disadvantage of under-segmentation. It is not applicable for re-
mote sensing imagery and does not consider the complexity of
imaging environment, the diversity of feature style, and the scale
of object. In this paper, we optimize and apply the SRM algo-
rithm for HR imagery for initial fine segmentation.
B. Minimum Heterogeneity Rule
In order to implement the multiscale segmentation, the MHR
is introduced to merge two adjacent regions from the initial
segmentation.
A MHR is defined as follows, which not only considering
the color heterogeneity ( ) but also shape heterogeneity
( )
(3)
where and are weight values of color het-
erogeneity and shape heterogeneity, respectively, and
, , .
The color heterogeneity describes the spectral infor-
mation which indicates the similar degree of the two adjacent
regions. The shape heterogeneity ( ) describes the differ-
ence of compact degree ( ) and smooth degree ( )
before and after two adjacent regions are merged. The value of
represents the cluster degree of the pixels in the region.
Smaller the value is, more compact the pixels in the region. The
LI et al.: EFFICIENT MULTISCALE SRMMHR (STATISTICAL REGION MERGING AND MINIMUM HETEROGENEITY RULE) SEGMENTATION METHOD 69

value of represents the degree of smoothness for the re-

gion boundary. The smaller the value, the smoother the region
boundary.
The MHR considers both color and shape information that
could reduce the disturbance from noise, reduces fragmentized
degree of object boundary, and gets more regular objects.

C. Multiscale SRMMHR Segmentation Method Based on SRM

and MHR
On the basis of analyzing the SRM and MHR algorithm, we
developed a new multiscale SRMMHR segmentation algorithm.
The SRMMHR method is improved from SRM for getting ini-
tial fine segmentation results and MHR used for merging two
adjacent regions from the initial segmentation results.
The improvements of the SRM algorithm are as follows.
1) Make full use of all bands information of remote sensing Fig. 1. Flowchart of the SRMMHR multiscale segmentation.
imagery. The original algorithm is only suitable for grey
and color image, but we now improved and applied it in
remote sensing imagery with many bands.
2) Define scale parameter and set up the relationship be-
tween and the segmentation scale parameter . Since the
SRM has the ability of multiscale segmentation, is de-
fined to satisfy the direct proportion relationship between
the image scale and the object size. Namely, the bigger the
scale, the bigger the object size and the fewer the object
numbers.
3) Define merging predicate more strictly. Since
, the strict merging
predicate is
Fig. 2. Four-scale hierarchical network of image objects spaces.

true if
false otherwise
(4)
where , is scale pa-
rameter which controls the coarseness of the segmentation,
denotes the observed average for channel in region ,
stands for the set of regions with pixels. are
channels of imagery.
The flowchart of the SRMMHR multiscale segmentation al-
gorithm is shown in Fig. 1 which is composed of two main pro-
cedures: the initial segmentation by the improved SRM algo-
rithm and the merging process by the MHR algorithm.
There are four steps in the initial segmentation procedure.
1) Suppose that the image contains rows and columns.
This represents couples of adja-
cent pixels (in 4-connexity). Set the sort function shown in
(1), and then sort the couples of adjacent pixels (pair-
pixels) according to the size of the function. Ordering the
pair-pixels is a way to eliminate over-segmentation and the
hybrid error, because all merging tests inside true regions
are made before any merging test between true regions.
2) Ascertain the merge predicate shown in (2) that is relative
to pair-pixels and make sure the position of upper level
nodes the pairs belong to.
3) Decide whether the seeds of pair-pixels are at the same
position, and whether they satisfy the merge predicate. If
their positions are not identical and they satisfy the merge
predicate( ), the pair-pixels are merged and the
area is updated with the sum of the pair-pixels.
4) Repeat step 2–3 until all pair-pixels are segmented by the
approach. Then an initial pixel-based segmentation result
is realized.
As to the multiscale segmentation, there are four steps in the
merging procedure.
1) Convert the initial segmentation result into a polygon
vector layer and save it as an ESRI shapefile. The key
steps of the vectorization algorithm include searching of
boundary, the generation of topology structure, and the
removal of redundant points. These results are then saved
as a shapefile (.shp) and the associate database file (.dbf)
with statistics information of each polygon object (i.e.,
mean, standard deviation and boundary length).
2) Set the parameters of MHR, such as weights of color,
shape, compact, smooth ( , , ,
), , and then compute heterogeneity value
of neighboring polygon according to (3).
3) Decide whether satisfy MHR, if , the adjacent
smaller objects are merged into other bigger ones, mean-
while, the average size, standard deviation, and mean of all
the object regions will be calculated.
4) Repeat step 2–3 to accomplish multiscale segmentation.
This relationship between each level is shown in Fig. 2.
70 IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN APPLIED EARTH OBSERVATIONS AND REMOTE SENSING, VOL. 2, NO. 2, JUNE 2009

Fig. 3. Multiscale segmentation results from different segmentation methods. (a) Panchromatic image. (b) Multispectral image. (c) Pan-sharpened image. (d) Initial
segmentation result of SRM using scale parameter 8. (e) New SRMMHR method’s result with scale parameter 40. (f) New SRMMHR method’s result with scale
parameter 60. (g) eCognition’s result with scale parameter 100. (h) eCognition’s result with scale parameter 150. (i) eCognition’s result with scale parameter 20.
(j) SRM’s result with scale parameter 8. (k) SRM’s result with scale parameter 16. (l) SRM’s result with scale parameter 22.

Scale 1 stands for initial segmentation level based on pixel-
based segmentation. The scale 2, scale 3, and scale 4 stand for
multiscale segmentation level based on object-based merging.
To guarantee a definite hierarchy over the spatial shape of all
objects, the segmentation procedures follow the following rules
[13].
1) Object borders must follow borders of objects on the lower
scale.
2) Segmentation is constrained by the border of the object on
the upper level.
3) The correction of object shape based on merging sub-ob-
jects is possible.
III. SEGMENTATION EXPERIMENT
A. Experiment Data
To evaluate the performance of the proposed segmentation
approach, a multispectral QuickBird imagery at 2.44-m reso-
lution and a panchromatic QuickBird imagery at 0.61-m res-
olution, which were acquired in May 2005 in HeFei city of
LI et al.: EFFICIENT MULTISCALE SRMMHR (STATISTICAL REGION MERGING AND MINIMUM HETEROGENEITY RULE) SEGMENTATION METHOD 71

TABLE I TABLE II
PARAMETERS OF THE NEW METHOD PARAMETERS OF ECOGNITION

TABLE III
China. The area is about 1023 822 pixels representing a com- PARAMETERS OF SRM
plex urban environment. The study area in the city is character-
ized by classes of road, highway, grass, and building. Initially,
the QuickBrid imagery were geometrically corrected to the Uni-
versal Transverse Mercator (UTM) projection, and then fused to
a 0.61-m multispectral image. Fig. 3(a) shows the panchromatic
QuickBird image, and Fig. 3(b) shows the multispectral Quick-
Bird image composite of band 4 (infra-red), band 2 (green), and
band 1 (blue). Fig. 3(c) shows the pan-sharpened image com- woodland belong to the same level of land cover class, however,
positing from the same bands as Fig. 3(b). their sizes are significantly different.
We also notice that there are small redundant objects shown
B. Segmentation Experiment in Fig. 3(j). The redundant objects may be wiped off when the
scale becomes large, but there remains the limitation shown in
Initially, we segmented the pan-sharpened image through
Fig. 3(l).
the improved SRM segmentation algorithm to get the initial
However, the new proposed method overcomes these lim-
segmentation result. The key issue is trying to adjust scale
itations by SRM acting as initial segmentation. As shown in
parameter until getting better initial segmentation result,
Fig. 3(d), we notice that the highway is integrally detached
and then these segmented imagery was vectorized in shapefile
avoiding smash objects. When the scale becomes bigger, some
format using the CASM ImageInfo® remote sensing imagery
classes such as highway, building, grass are easy to extract,
processing software developed by Chinese Academy of Sur-
and there is less small objects shown in Fig. 3(f). The bigger
veying and Mapping (CASM) [19]. The new vectorization
the scale, the fewer the object numbers, the bigger the object
algorithm can deal with multibands imagery such as segmen-
region, and the boundary of region may disappear or remain. In
tation imagery. Fig. 3(d) shows the vector file overlaid on the
order to get more accurate objects such as buildings, we need
initial segmentation result.
to correct several small areas along the perimeter of the newly
Then, the objects from the initial segmentation were merged
formed polygon that look similar to the buildings.
through the MHR method. The objects information such as
2) Quality Assessment: Besides the visual assessment, shape
mean, boundary length, and standard deviation is recomputed
index ( , , where is area, is perimeter,
for merging operation. Fig. 3(e) and (f) shows the course-scale
stands for the region ) was used to evaluate the segmenta-
imageries when the scale threshold is set to 40 and 60, respec-
tion quality among three big scale imageries [Fig. 3(f), (i), (l)].
tively. Table I shows the detailed parameters.
The lower the value is, the better the quality is [21]. Therefore,
In order to evaluate the performance of the proposed method,
ten different areas (varying in location, form, area, texture, con-
we also segmented the pan-sharpened QuickBird imagery using
trast, land cover type, etc.) were selected and each was visu-
FNEA that the eCognition software adopted [20]. The multi-
ally and geometrically compared with the segmented pendants.
scale segmentation results are shown in Fig. 3(g), (h), and (i),
Detailed evaluations of some reference object were shown in
and the detailed parameters are shown in Table II. Moreover,
Table IV and the results of all ten reference areas were shown
we carried on multiscale SRM segmentation, and the results are
in Table V. The results in Table V showed that the new segmen-
shown in Fig. 3(j), (k), and (l), and detail parameters are shown
tation method has the advantage on average region conformity
in Table III.
(lowest shape index difference) when compared with traditional
SRM and FNEA segmentation method.
C. Accuracy Assessment
Obviously, the new multiscale SRMMHR segmentation
1) Visual Assessment: As shown in Fig. 3(g), we notice that method shows advantages over traditional multiscale SRM and
the FNEA method always divides the big homogeneity region FNEA algorithm in the following aspects.
into lots of small regions with the similar size, especially for 1) It makes full use of shape, spectral, scale, local and global
the class of highway. The limitation may be solved by merging information and the parameters could be adjusted for var-
the same classes, but it is based on initial segmentation objects. ious classes.
When the scale becomes bigger, there still has the phenomena 2) It integrates the superiorities of SRM segmentation method
shown in Fig. 3(f). This is caused by the assumption that the and MHR merging method, wipes off small redundant ob-
objects at the same scale have similar size which is in consistent jects that traditional SRM method existed, avoids the phe-
with nature phenomena. As we know, building, road, grass and nomena of big homogeneity region that has lots of small
72 IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN APPLIED EARTH OBSERVATIONS AND REMOTE SENSING, VOL. 2, NO. 2, JUNE 2009
TABLE IV
DETAILED EVALUATIONS OF SOME REFERENCE OBJECT
TABLE V
CUMULATED RESULTS OF ALL 10 REFERENCE AREAS
regions with the similar size that the FNEA method ex-
isted, and gets more integrated and accurate objects.
3) The segmentation result in vector and raster format inte-
grates RS and GIS expediently, and establishes better foun-
dation for higher level image processing such as pattern
recognition and object-oriented image interpretation.
IV. CONCLUSION
This study proposed a new multiscale SRMMHR segmenta-
tion method based on SRM and MHR. Compared with the multi-
scale SRM and FNEA method, the results indicates that the pro-
posed method is an efficient multiscale segmentation for HR im-
agery (e.g., QuickBird). The SRMMHR method makes full use
of shape, spectral, scale, local, and global information, wipes off
small redundant objects, avoids the phenomena of the big homo-
geneity region that has lots of small regions with the similar size,
and gets more integrate and accurate objects. The SRM method
used for initial segmentation achieves robust and accurate seg-
mentation results not only using the spectral, shape, scale infor-
mation, but also with the ability to cope with significant noise
corruption and handle occlusions. The MHR used for merging
objects relies on the effectiveness of local and global qualities
and its consideration of shape and spectral features. However,
the new SRMMHR method has some limitations that it uses
only one criterion, i.e., radiometric distance between region cen-
troids, an underlying premise of any segmentation method is
that radiometric similarity and semantic similarity go hand in
hand. It requires the user to set parameters that are nonintuitive,
such as the scale, the weight, and the stop criterion.
Nevertheless, there are many other issues that require further
investigation, including the improvement of sort function and
merge predicate, the study of evaluation index for estimating
segmentation results, the determination of parameters for var-
ious classes, a thorough comparison with other segmentation
methods, and the applications of the proposed method in dif-
ferent RS imagery.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank the referees for their com-
ments on this paper. The SRMMHR multiscale segmentation
method was realized on the basis of the SRM method developed
by R. Nock and F. Nielsen and the FNEA method that eCogni-
tion adopted.
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LI et al.: EFFICIENT MULTISCALE SRMMHR (STATISTICAL REGION MERGING AND MINIMUM HETEROGENEITY RULE) SEGMENTATION METHOD
Haitao Li received the Doctor’s degree from the
Huazhong University of Science and Technology,
Wuhan, China, in 2005, with a major in pattern
recognition and artificial intelligence.
He is currently an Associate Researcher with the
Chinese Academy of Surveying and Mapping and
the member of National Standardization Technical
Committee for Geomatics (SAC/TC230). His re-
search interests include photogrammetry and remote
sensing, pattern recognition, and high-performance
processing for remote sensing imagery.
Haiyan Gu received the Master’s degree from the
LiaoNing University of Engineering and Technology,
Fuxin, China, in 2008, with a major in photogram-
metry and remote sensing.
Her research interests include image classification,
image segmentation, support vector machine theory,
and wavelet theory.
73
Yanshun Han received the Master’s degree from the
LiaoNing University of Engineering and Technology,
Fuxin, China, in 2006, and major in photogrammetry
and remote sensing.
He is currently an Assistant Researcher with the
Chinese Academy of Surveying and Mapping. His re-
search interests include image matching and correc-
tion and image fusion.
Jinghui Yang received the Master’s degree from the
Chinese Northeastern University , ShenYang, China,
in 2005, with a major in computer science. He is cur-
rently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in remote sensing at
Wuhan University, China.
His research interests are mainly in remote sensing
data fusion, high performance processing for remote
sensing imagery, and information extraction.