Multilevel image segmentation with adaptive image context based thresholding

Neural network based image segmentation techniques primarily focus on the selection of appropriate thresholding points in the image feature space. Research initiatives in this direction aim at addressing this problem of effective threshold selection for activation functions. Multilevel activation functions resort to fixed and uniform thresholding mechanisms. These functions assume homogeneity of the image information content. In this paper, we propose a collection of adaptive thresholding approaches to multilevel activation functions. The proposed thresholding mechanisms incorporate the image context information in the thresholding process. Applications of these mechanisms are demonstrated on the segmentation of real life multilevel intensity images using a self-supervised multilayer self-organizing neural network (MLSONN) and a supervised pyramidal neural network (PyraNet). We also present a bi-directional self-organizing neural network (BDSONN) architecture suitable for multilevel image segmentation. The architecture uses an embedded adaptive thresholding mechanism to a characteristic multilevel activation function. The segmentation efficiencies of the thresholding mechanisms evaluated using four unsupervised measures of merit, are reported for the three neural network architectures considered. (c) 2010 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.