A segmentation algorithm for noisy images

This paper presents a 2-D image segmentation algorithm and addresses issues related to its performance on noisy images. The algorithm segments an image by first constructing a minimum spanning tree representation of the image and then partitioning the spanning tree into subtrees representing different homogeneous regions. The spanning tree is partitioned in such a way that the sum of gray-level variations over all partitioned subtrees is minimized under the constraints that each subtree has at least a specified number of pixels and two adjacent subtrees have significantly different "average" gray-levels. Two types of noise, transmission errors and Gaussian additive noise, are considered and their effects on the segmentation algorithm are studied. Evaluation results have shown that the segmentation algorithm is robust in the presence of these two types of noise.