Watershed segmentation with boundary curvature ratio based merging criterion

Abstract

This paper proposes to incorporate boundary curvature ratio, region homogeneity and boundary smoothness into a single new merging criterion to improve the oversegmentation of marker-controlled watershed segmentation algorithm. The result is a more refined segmentation result with smooth boundaries and regular shapes. To pursue a final segmentation result with higher inter-variance and lower intra-variance, an optimal number of segments could be self-determined by a proposed formula. Experimental results are presented to demonstrate the merits of this method.