Segmentation of colour food images using a robust algorithm

In this paper, a robust algorithm to segmenting food image from a background is presented using colour images. The proposed method has three steps: (i) computation of a high contrast grey value image from an optimal linear combination of the RGB colour components; (ii) estimation of a global threshold using a statistical approach; and (iii) morphological operation in order to fill the possible holes presented in the segmented binary image. Although the suggested threshold separates the food image from the background very well, the user can modify it in order to achieve better results. The algorithm was implemented in Matlab and tested on 45 images taken in very different conditions. The segmentation performance was assessed by computing the area A(z) under the receiver operation characteristic (ROC) curve. The achieved performance was A(z) = 0.9982. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.