
9
Image Segmentation
Qiang Wu and Kenneth R. Castleman
9.1 Introduction
Image segmentation is a task of fundamental importance in digital image
analysis. It is the process that partitions a digital image into disjoint (nonover-
lapping) regions, each of which typically corresponds to one object. Once
isolated, these objects can be measured and classified, as discussed in Chapters
10 and 11, respectively. Unlike human vision, where image segmentation takes
place without effort, digital processing requires that we laboriously isolate the
objects by breaking up the image into regions, one for each object [1]. Errors in
the segmentation process almost certainly ...