• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.30 no.11C
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• pp.1076-1082
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• 2005

Recently, there have been much efforts in the image segmentation using morphological approach. Among them, the watershed algorithm is one of powerful tools which can take advantages of both of the conventional edge-based segmentation and region-based segmentation. The concept of watershed is based on topographic analogy. But, its high sensitivity to noise yields a very large number of resulting segmented regions which leads to oversegmentation. So we suggest the restricted waterfall algorithm which reduce the oversegmentation by eliminate not only local minima but also local maxima. As a result, the restricted waterfall algorithm has a good segmented image than the other methods, and has a better binary image than the histogram thresholding method.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2000.09a
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• pp.639-642
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• 2000

본 논문에서는 구름이나 연기와 같은 non-rigid object에 대한 영역 분할 방식에 대해 연구하였다. Non-rigid object의 효과적인 영역 분할을 위해서 object의 윤곽선을 정확히 파악해 낼 수 있는 장점을 가진 watershed 알고리즘을 사용하였다. 하지만 이 알고리즘은 object가 많은 영역으로 분할되는 oversegmentation 현상이 발생하여 본 논문에서는 pre, post-processing을 통해 이 oversegmentation 현상을 극복하고자 하였다. Pre-processing에서는 noise를 제거하고 영상을 단순화하면서 정확한 gradient magnitude를 구할 수 있는 방법에 대해서, post-processing에서는 통계적인 분석을 통한 region merging을 이용하여 object를 최적화 상태로 찾아줄 수 있는 방법에 대하여 연구하였다.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2001.09a
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• pp.283-286
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• 2001

In this paper, we present a robust region segmentation method based on the watershed transformation of a pseudo-distance map (PDM). A usual approach for the segmentation of a gray-scale image with the watershed algorithm is to apply it to a gradient magnitude image or the Euclidean distance map (EDM) of an edge image. However, it is well known that this approach suffers from the oversegmentation of the given image due to noisy gradients or spurious edges caused by a thresholding operation. In this paper we show thor applying the watershed algorithm to the EDM, which is a regularized version of the EDM and is directly computed form the edgestrength function (ESF) of the input image, significantly reduces the oversegmentation, and the final segmentation results obtained by a simple region-merging process are more reliable and less noisy than those of the gradient-or EDM-based methods. We also propose a simple and efficient region-merging criterion considering both boundary strengths and inner intensities of regions to be merged. The robustness of our method is proven by testing it with a variety of synthetic and real images.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2003.11a
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• pp.377-380
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• 2003

A new color image segmentation scheme is presented in this paper. The proposed algorithm consists of image simplification, region labeling and color clustering. The vector-valued diffusion process is performed in the perceptually uniform LUV color space. We present a discrete 3-D diffusion model for easy implementation. The statistical characteristics of each labeled region are employed to estimate the number of total clusters and agglomerative hierarchical clustering is performed with the estimated number of clusters. Since the proposed clustering algorithm counts each region as a unit, it does not generate oversegmentation along region boundaries.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2000.09a
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• pp.647-650
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• 2000

PACS의 보급으로 인하여 CT, MRI 등의 의료영상이 진료에 광범위하게 사용되고 있고, 또 의사가 좀 더 정량적이거나 사실적인 visualization을 위해서 분할은 필수적으로 수행되어져야 할 과정이라고 할 수 있다. 의료 영상에서 watershed 알고리듬을 이용하여 분할을 하는데 있어 가장 큰 문제가 되는 점은 과분할현상(Oversegmentation)이기 때문에 그 분할된 영역을 의미 있는 영역별로 합치는 영역 병합(merge) 과정을 필요로 하게 된다. 의료영상에서 모호한 경계는 매우 빈번하게 나타나기 때문에 기존의 병합 방법을 적용하는데 어려움이 있다. 본 논문에서는 이런 모호한 경계를 갖는 영상에서도 알맞는 병합을 가질 수 있는 적응적 영역 병합 방법을 제안한다. 제안된 분할 방법을 DICOM 영상의 폐 영상과 다리 뼈 영상에서 실험하였다. 그 결과 뼈와 폐영역을 성공적으로 병합하면서 인접한 장기들과는 구분 지을 수 있었다.

• 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.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.151-163
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• 1989

A statistical approach for the segmentation of speed signals is described in this paper. The main idea of this algorithm is the use of three AR models. Two fixed models are identified at the stationary parts of the signal before and after the spectral change. Changes are detected when the distance between these two models is high. Another model is located between two fixed models and is used to estimate spectral change time. This segmentation algorithm has been tested with connected words and compared to classical methods. The results showed that it can provide more accurate locations of boundaries of segments and can reduce the amount of oversegmentation.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics S
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• v.36S no.1
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• pp.81-92
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• 1999

In this paper, we propose a new image segmentation algorithm which can be use din object-based image coding applications such as MPGA-4. Since the conventional objet segmentation methods based on mathematical morphology tend to yield oversegmented results, they normally need a postprocess which merges small regions to obtain a larger one. To solve this oversegmentation problem, in this paper, we prosed a block-based segmentation algorithm that can identify large texture regions in the image. Also, by applying the watershed algorithm to the image blocks between the homogeneous regions, we can obtain the exact pixel-based contour. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm yields larger segments, particularly in the textural area, and reduces the computational complexities.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea CI
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.38-46
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• 2004

Image segmentation is the task which partitions the image into meaningful regions and considered to be one of the most important steps in computer vision and image processing. Image segmentation is also widely used in object-based video compression such as MPEG-4 to extract out the object regions from the given frame. Watershed algorithm is frequently used to obtain the more accurate region boundaries. But, it is well known that the watershed algorithm is extremely sensitive to gradient noise and usually results in oversegmentation. To solve such a problem, we propose an image segmentation method which is robust to noise by using stabilized inverse diffusion equation (SIDE) and is more efficient in segmentation by employing multiresolution approach. In this paper, we apply both the region projection method using labels of adjacent regions and the region merging method based on region adjacency graph (RAG). Experimental results on noisy image show that the oversegmenation is reduced and segmentation efficiency is increased.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea CI
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• v.38 no.6
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• pp.113-119
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• 2001

In this paper, we propose an improved watershed algorithm that resolves the oversegmentation problem shown in the previous watershed algorithm and its modifications when the spatial video segmentation is performed. The principal idea of the proposed algorithm is merging the shallow catchment basin whose depth is less than a given threshold into the deeper one during flooding step. In the flooding process, the growth of the existing catchment basins and the extraction of newly flooded ones are accomplished. We present the experimental results using several MPEG test sequences in the last part of the paper. As a consequence, the proposed algorithm shows good segmentation results according to the thresholds applied by adding very small amount of calculations.