LS-SVM based image segmentation using color and texture information

Image segmentation partitions an image into nonoverlapping regions, which ideally should be meaningful for a certain purpose. Automatic segmentation of images is a very challenging fundamental task in computer vision and one of the most crucial steps toward image understanding. In recent years, many image segmentation algorithms have been developed, but they are often very complex and some undesired results occur frequently. In this paper, we present an effective color image segmentation approach based on pixel classification with least squares support vector machine (LS-SVM). Firstly, the pixel-level color feature, Homogeneity, is extracted in consideration of local human visual sensitivity for color pattern variation in HSV color space. Secondly, the image pixel’s texture features, Maximum local energy, Maximum gradient, and Maximum second moment matrix, are represented via Gabor filter. Then, both the pixel-level color feature and texture feature are used as input of LS-SVM model (classifier), and the LS-SVM model (classifier) is trained by selecting the training samples with Arimoto entropy thresholding. Finally, the color image is segmented with the trained LS-SVM model (classifier). This image segmentation not only can fully take advantage of the local information of color image, but also the ability of LS-SVM classifier. Experimental evidence shows that the proposed method has very effective segmentation results and computational behavior, and decreases the time and increases the quality of color image segmentation in comparison with the state-of-the-art segmentation methods recently proposed in the literature.

► To segment the color image using LS-SVM pixel classification.
► To extract the pixel-level color feature in consideration of local human visual sensitivity for color pattern variation.
► To represent the image pixel’s texture feature via Gabor filter.
► To select the LS-SVM training samples by Arimoto entropy thresholding.