• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.10 no.9
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• pp.4386-4404
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• 2016

Most existing salient object detection algorithms commonly employed segmentation techniques to eliminate background noise and reduce computation by treating each segment as a processing unit. However, individual small segments provide little information about global contents. Such schemes have limited capability on modeling global perceptual phenomena. In this paper, a novel salient object detection algorithm is proposed based on region merging. An adaptive-based merging scheme is developed to reassemble regions based on their color dissimilarities. The merging strategy can be described as that a region R is merged with its adjacent region Q if Q has the lowest dissimilarity with Q among all Q's adjacent regions. To guide the merging process, superpixels that located at the boundary of the image are treated as the seeds. However, it is possible for a boundary in the input image to be occupied by the foreground object. To avoid this case, we optimize the boundary influences by locating and eliminating erroneous boundaries before the region merging. We show that even though three simple region saliency measurements are adopted for each region, encouraging performance can be obtained. Experiments on four benchmark datasets including MSRA-B, SOD, SED and iCoSeg show the proposed method results in uniform object enhancement and achieve state-of-the-art performance by comparing with nine existing methods.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2006.06a
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• pp.299-300
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• 2006

In this paper, we propose a segmentation algorithm which combines the ideas from local watershed transforms and the region merging algorithm based hierarchical queue. Only the process of watershed and region merging algorithm can be restricted area. A fast region merging approach is proposed to extract the video object from the regions of watershed segmentation. Results show the effectiveness and convenience of the approach.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.156-169
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• 1997

This paper proposes an image segmentation technique using watershed algorithm followed by region merging method. A gradient image is obtained by applying multiscale gradient algorithm to the image simplified by morphological filters. Since the watershed algorithm produces the oversegmented image. it is necessary to merge small segmented regions as wel]' as region having similar characteristics. For region merging. we utilize the merging criteria based on both the mean value of the pixels of each region and the edge intensities between regions obtained by the contour following process. Experimental results show that the proposed method produces meaningful image segmentation results.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2002.06c
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• pp.59-62
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• 2002

Watershed Segmentation with Multiple Merging Conditions in Region Growing Process The watershed segmentation method holds the merits of edge-based and region-based methods together, but still shows some problems such as over segmentation and merging fault. We propose an algorithm which overcomes the problems of the watershed method and shows efficient performance for .general images, not for specific ones. The algorithm segments or merges regions by thresholding the depths of the catchment basins, the similarities and the sizes of the regions. The experimental results shows the reduction of the number of the segmented regions that are suitable to human visual system and consciousness.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 1998.06a
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• pp.661-664
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• 1998

Since the region segmentation at high resolution contains most of viable semantic object contours in an image, the bottom-up approach for image segmentation is appropriate for the application such as MPEG-4 which needs to preserve semantic object contours. However, the conventioal region merging methods, that follow the region segmentation, have poor performance in keeping low-contrast semantic object contours. In this paper, we propose an image segmentation algorithm based on classified region merging. The algorithm pre-segments an image with a large number of small regions, and also classifies it into several classes having similar gradient characteristics. Then regions only in the same class are merged according to the boundary weakness or statisticsal similarity. The simulation result shows that the proposed image segmentation preserves semantic object contours very well even with a small number of regions.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.731-740
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• 2010

A region merging technique is suggested in this paper for the segmentation of high-spatial resolution imagery. It employs a region growing scheme based on the region adjacency graph (RAG). The proposed algorithm uses directional neighbor-line average feature vectors to improve the quality of segmentation. The feature vector consists of 9 components which includes an observation and 8 directional averages. Each directional average is the average of the pixel values along the neighbor line for a given neighbor line length at each direction. The merging coefficients of the segmentation process use a part of the feature components according to a given merging coefficient order. This study performed the extensive experiments using simulation data and a real high-spatial resolution data of IKONOS. The experimental results show that the new approach proposed in this study is quite effective to provide segments of high quality for the object-based analysis of high-spatial resolution images.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics S
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• v.34S no.11
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• pp.102-113
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• 1997

In this paepr, a new image segmentation method reducing efficiently contour information causing bottleneck problem at segmentatio-based very low bit rate codingis proposed, while preserving objective and subjective quality. It consists of 4-level hierarchical image segmentation based on mathematical morphology and 1-leve region merging structure using contast of two adjacent regions. For two adjacent region pairs at the fourth level included in each region of the thid level, contrast is calculated. Among the pairs of two adjacent regions with less value than threshold, two adjacent regions having the minimum contrast are merged first. After region merging, texture of the merged region is updated. The procedure is performed recursively for all the adjacent region pairs at the fourth level included in each region of the third level. Compared with the previous method, the objective and subjective image qualities are similar. But it reduces 46.65% texture information on the average by decreasing total region number to be tansmitted. Specially, it shows reduction of the 23.95% contour information of the average. Thus, it can improve efficiently the bottleneck problem at segementation-based very low bit rate coding.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.52 no.4
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• pp.89-97
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• 2019

We demonstrate the subsurface origin of the observed evolution of the solar active region 10930 (AR10930) associated with merging and breakup of magnetic polarity regions at the solar surface. We performed a magnetohydrodynamic simulation of an emerging magnetic flux tube whose field-line twist is asymmetrically distributed along its axis, which is a key to merging and fragmentation in this active region. While emerging into the surface, the flux tube is subjected to partial splitting of its weakly twisted portion, forming separate polarity regions at the solar surface. As emergence proceeds, these separate polarity regions start to merge and then break up, while in the corona sigmoidal structures form and a solar eruption occurs. We discuss what physical processes could be involved in the characteristic evolution of an active region magnetic field that leads to the formation of a sunspot surrounded by satellite polarity regions.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics S
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• v.36S no.1
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• pp.70-80
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• 1999

In this paper, a new hierarchical image segmentation algorithm based on human visual system(HVS) characteristic is proposed which can efficiently reduce and control transmission information quantity without the degradation of the subjective and objective image quality. It consists of image segmentation based on mathematical morphology and region merging considering HVS characteristic for the pairs of two adjacent regions at each level of the hierarchy. Image segmentation is composed of 3-level hierarchical structure. In the region merging structure of each level, we extract the pairs of two adjacent regions which human vision can't discriminate, and then merge them. The proposed region merging method extracts pairs of two neighbor regions to be merged and performs region merging according to merging priority based on HVS characteristics. The merging priority for each adjacent pair is determined by the proposed merging priority function(MPF). First of all, the highest priority pair is merged. The information control factor is used to regulate the transmission information at each level. The proposed segmentation algorithm can efficiently improve bottleneck problem caused by excessive contour information at region-based very low bit rate coding. And it shows that it is more flexible structure than that of conventional method. In experimental results, though PSNR and the subjective image quality by the proposed algorithm is similar to that of conventional method, the contour information quantity to be transmitted is reduced considerably. Therefore it is an efficient image segmentation algorithm for region-based very low bit rate coding.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.63-71
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• 2003

This paper describes a color image segmentation algorithm based on region merging using hue difference as a restrictive condition. The proposed algorithm using mathematical morphology and a modified watershed algorithm does over-segmentation in the RGB space to preserve contour information of regions. Then, the segmentation result of color image is acquired by repeated region merging using hue differences as a restrictive condition. This stems from human visual system based on hue, saturation, and intensity. Hue difference between two regions is used as a restrictive condition for region merging because it becomes more important factor than color difference if intensity is not low. Simulation results show that the proposed color image segmentation algorithm provides efficient segmentation results with the predefined number of regions for various color images.