Image thresholding based on Pareto multiobjective optimization

A new image thresholding method based on multiobjective optimization following the Pareto approach is presented. This method allows to optimize several segmentation criteria simultaneously, in order to improve the quality of the segmentation. To obtain the Pareto front and then the optimal Pareto solution, we adapted the evolutionary algorithm NSGA-II (Deb et al., 2002). The final solution or Pareto solution corresponds to that allowing a compromise between the different segmentation criteria, without favouring any one. The proposed method was evaluated on various types of images. The obtained results show the robustness of the method, and its non dependence towards the kind of the image to be segmented. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.