An enhanced exponential distribution optimizer and its application for multi-level medical image thresholding problems

Abstract

In this paper, an enhanced version of the Exponential Distribution Optimizer (EDO) called mEDO is introduced to tackle global optimization and multi-level image segmentation problems. EDO is a math-inspired optimizer that has many limitations in handling complex multi-modal problems. mEDO tries to solve these drawbacks using 2 operators: phasor operator for diversity enhancement and an adaptive p-best mutation strategy for preventing it converging to local optima. To validate the effectiveness of the suggested optimizer, a comprehensive set of comparative experiments using the CEC'2020 test suite was conducted. The experimental results consistently prove that the suggested technique outperforms its counterparts in terms of both convergence speed and accuracy. Moreover, the suggested mEDO algorithm was applied for image segmentation using the multi-threshold image segmentation method with Otsu's entropy, providing further evidence of its enhanced performance. The algorithm was evaluated by comparing its results with those of existing well-known algorithms at various threshold levels. The experimental results validate that the proposed mEDO algorithm attains exceptional segmentation results for various threshold levels.

Keywords

• Exponential distribution optimizer
• Multi-level thresholding
• Meta-heuristic algorithms
• Image segmentation
• Otsu's method
• Global optimization