Investigations on fuzzy thresholding based on fuzzy clustering

Thresholding, the problem of pixel classification is attempted here using fuzzy clustering algorithms. The segmented regions are fuzzy subsets, with soft partitions characterizing the region boundaries. The validity of the assumptions and thresholding schemes are investigated in the presence of distinct region proportions. The hard k means and fuzzy c means algorithms have been found useful when object and background regions are well balanced. Fuzzy thresholding is also formulated as extraction of normal densities to provide optimal partitions. Regional imbalances in gray distributions are taken care of in region normalized histograms. (C) 1997 Pattern Recognition Society. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.