Watershed-based segmentation and region merging

In recent years, the watershed line has emerged as the primary tool of mathematical morphology for image segmentation. Several very efficient algorithms have been devised for the determination of watersheds. Nevertheless, the application of water-shed algorithms to an image is often disappointing: the image is oversegmented into a large number of tiny, shallow watersheds, where one wanted to obtain only a few deep ones. This paper presents a novel approach to watershed merging. Mainly, it addresses the following question: given an image, what is the closest image that has a simpler watershed structure? The basic idea is to replicate the process of watershed merging that takes place when rain falls over a real landscape: smaller watersheds progressively fill until an overflow occurs. The water then flows to a nearby, larger or deeper watershed, in which the overflown watersheds are merged. The methods presented in this paper apply the minimum extensive modifications possible to a given image to obtain a new one that has many fewer watersheds but is still "close" to the original. Their usefulness is demonstrated for several biomedical applications, (C) 2000 Academic Press.