TEXTURED IMAGE SEGMENTATION BY CONTEXT ENHANCED CLUSTERING

An unsupervised textured image segmentation technique based on multidimensional feature vector clustering is described, where the features are the parameters of an autoregressive model. The benefits of incorporating spatial contextual information are demonstrated on both true cluster number estimation and actual image segmentation. A simple within-cluster distance is used for cluster validity analysis, where feature vectors are modified through local spatial dependency. This greatly reduces the dispersion in the raw feature data fed to the clustering process, and improves the true cluster number estimation. At the segmentation stage, three schemes incorporating contextual information at feature vector and label levels are proposed to enhance the segmentation accuracy. One is a development of a technique due to Mardia and Hainsworth (1988). The proposed approaches are tested on a four-class textured image.