The image segmentation difficulties of small objects which are much smaller than their background often occur in target detection and recognition. The existing threshold segmentation methods almost fail under the circumstances. Thus, a threshold selection method is proposed on the basis of area difference between background and object and intra-class variance. The threshold selection formulae based on one-dimensional (1-D) histogram, two-dimensional (2-D) histogram vertical segmentation and 2-D histogram oblique segmentation are given. A fast recursive algorithm of threshold selection in 2-D histogram oblique segmentation is derived. The segmented images and processing time of the proposed method are given in experiments. It is compared with some fast algorithms, such as Otsu, maximum entropy and Fisher threshold selection methods. The experimental results show that the proposed method can effectively segment the small object images and has better anti-noise property.
The image segmentation difficulties of small objects which are much smaller than their background often occur in target detection and recognition. The existing threshold segmentation methods almost fail under the circumstances. Thus, a threshold selection method is proposed on the basis of area difference between background and object and intra-class variance. The threshold selection formulae based on one-dimensional (1-D) histogram, two-dimensional (2-D) histogram vertical segmentation and 2-D histogram oblique segmentation are given. A fast recursive algorithm of threshold selection in 2- D histogram oblique segmentation is derived. The segmented images and processing time of the proposed method are given in experiments. It is compared with some fast algorithms, such as Otsu, maximum entropy and Fisher threshold selection methods. The experimental results show that the proposed method can effectively segment the small object images and has better anti-noise property.