Fuzzy split and merge for shadow detection

Presence of shadow in an image often causes problems in computer vision applications such as object recognition and image segmentation. This paper proposes a method to detect the shadow from a single image using fuzzy split and merge approach. Split and merge is a classical algorithm used in image segmentation. Predicate function in the classical approach is replaced by a Fuzzy predicate in the proposed approach. The method follows a top down approach of recursively splitting an image into homogeneous quadtree blocks, followed by a bottom up approach by merging adjacent unique regions. The method has been compared with previous approaches and found to be better in performance in terms of accuracy.