Phase-based optimal image thresholding

The automatic binarization of gray-level images or the automatic determination of an optimum threshold value that separates objects from their background is still a difficult and challenging problem in many image processing applications. The difficulty may arise due to a number of factors, including...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Digital signal processing 2003-10, Vol.13 (4), p.636-655
Main Authors: Belkasim, S., Ghazal, A., Basir, O.A.
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:The automatic binarization of gray-level images or the automatic determination of an optimum threshold value that separates objects from their background is still a difficult and challenging problem in many image processing applications. The difficulty may arise due to a number of factors, including, poor contrast, high noise to signal ratio, complex patterns, and/or variable modalities in the gray-scale histograms. In this paper an algorithm for determining an optimum image thresholding value is proposed. Phase correlation between the gray-level image and its binary counterpart is defined as a function of the thresholding parameter. The optimum thresholding problem is then constructed as a problem of optimization where the objective is to find a threshold value that maximizes the phase correlation between the two images. Experimental results to compare the proposed algorithm to the various thresholding techniques are also presented.
ISSN:1051-2004
1095-4333
DOI:10.1016/S1051-2004(02)00032-5