Robust segmentation of the colour image by fusing the SDD clustering results from different colour spaces

Abstract

Segmentation of the colour image is challenging because the colour information is lost after being projected into three channels of the colour space. Many state-of-the-art colour image segmentation methods are based on monochrome segmentation in one channel of the colour space. However, the optimal performance of a segmentation method usually could not be achieved in a single colour space due to the complexity and diversity of the colour images. In this study, the authors propose to segment the colour image by fusing the slope difference distribution (SDD) clustering results in different colour spaces. For simplicity, the segmentation approach is designed as two-label segmentation and it could be easily generalised to be multiple-label segmentation. The proposed approach is compared with the state-of-the-art colour image segmentation methods both quantitatively and qualitatively. Experimental results verified the effectiveness of the proposed approach.