A fuzzy approach for texture-based segmentation

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a fuzzy approach for texture-based segmentation, where both the obtained regions and the texture features are fuzzy. This way, we have considered the imprecision related to the texture concept, as well as the imprecision associated with the boundaries between regions in the images. With regard to the texture descriptors, we propose to define them on the basis of the perceptual properties of texture. Since these properties are imprecise by nature, they are modelled by means of fuzzy sets defined on the domain of some of the most representative measures of each property. With regard to the segmentation technique, a fuzzy path-based segmentation is proposed. In this approach, fuzzy connectivity is used to measure the relationship between any pair of pixels. Thus, given a set of seed points, fuzzy regions are obtained on the basis of the connectivity between each seed point and the rest of pixels in the image. Finally, this proposal is applied to obtain fuzzy segmentations from real images