A Fast Image Segmentation Algorithm Based on Saliency Map and Neutrosophic Set Theory

Abstract

Due to more or less deviations in the imaging system, there will be noise in the image, which makes the image segmentation inaccurate. To divide a natural image into a more accurate binary image, the target and background of the image are effectively separated to achieve a more effective segmentation result. Therefore, this paper proposes an image segmentation algorithm combining a saliency map and neutrosophic set (NS) theory. First, to overcome the problem of weak edges in the image, we highlight the details and use the guided filter to filter the various channels of the natural image. Then, the initial saliency map is generated. After the weighted superposition of the initial saliency map, the local entropy map and the gray scale map, the final saliency map can be generated using the nonlinear function, and it can effectively highlight the foreground information of the image. Second, the saliency map is transformed to the NS domain and interpreted by three subsets: true (T), indeterminate (I), and false (F). According to NS theory, the indeterminacy is reduced, and the segmentation results are finally obtained by using the method of threshold. Various experiments were done and compared with other state-of-the-art approaches. These experiments demonstrate the effect of the proposed work, which is fast and effective for de-noising.

Keywords

• Imaging system
• image segmentation
• neutrosophic set theory
• saliency map
• the method of threshold