A new marker-based watershed algorithm

This paper proposes a novel automatic image-segmentation system, which improves the traditional marker-based watershed transform. A new marker-extracted approach is proposed to extract the regional minima from the low frequency components in the gradient map. The extracted minima constitute the binary marker image. Then the original gradient map is modified by suppressing its all-intrinsic minima around these extracted markers. Thus, compared with the traditional approach, both the spurious minima are more effectively removed and meanwhile the boundaries of objects are more effectively protected. Additionally, the performance of H-minima technology in our approach is improved further than the traditional application of this technology. Finally, the watershed algorithm is applied to the modified gradients to perform the segmentation. Across a variety of image types, it is proven that this new system can obtain meaningful and homogeneous regions with accurate, consecutive and one-pixel wide boundary. Additionally compared with other methods, this system requires fewer computations and simpler parameters and can more efficiently reduce the over-segmentation of the watershed algorithm.