An Improved Image Segmentation Algorithm Base on Normalized Cut
Qiu-Bo Xi
School of Automation Engineering
University of Electronic Science and Technology of China
Chengdu, 611731, P.R.China
e-mail:xiqiubo@gmail.com
Abstract— A novel approach for segmentation of images has
been proposed by incorporating the advantages of the mean
shift segmentation and the normalized cut partitioning
methods. The proposed method preprocesses an image by
using the mean shift algorithm to form segmented regions,
region nodes are applied to form the weight matrix W instead
of these regions, the Ncut method is then introduced for region
nodes clustering. Since the number of the segmented region
nodes is much smaller than that of the image pixels. The
proposed algorithm allows a low-dimensional image clustering
with significant reduction of the computational complexity
comparing to conventional Ncut method based on direct image
pixels. The experimental results also verify that the proposed
algorithm behaves an improved performance comparing to the
mean shift and the Ncut algorithm.
Keywords-Mean shift; Normalized cut (Ncut); Image
segmentation
I. INTRODUCTION
Mean shift [1] concept was first proposed in a estimates
of probability density gradient function by Fukunaga et al in
1975. Until 1995, another important document with respect
to the Mean-shift was published by Cheng Yizong [2], he has
made a lot of promotion work for the basic Mean-shift
algorithm, and pointed out the possible areas application of
the Mean-shift. In recent years, Mean-shift algorithm has
been widely used in computer vision areas, such as tracking,
image segmentation, image smoothing, filtering, image edge
extraction, information fusion, motion estimation, feature
space analysis, video data analysis and so on. It’s apt to over-
segmentation phenomenon, which is the common failing of
this algorithm.
The image segmentation technique based on graph theory
is a new research highlight in the international image
segmentation area, the technique considered pixel as nodes
and essentially transformed image segmentation issue to
optimization problem, undirected weighted graph is always
used in image segmentation based on graph theory, A graph
is always partitioned into multiple components , which can
minimize some cost function of the vertices in the
components and the boundaries between those components.
Up to now, a lot of graph cut-based methods have been put
forward for image segmentations. For instance, a general
image segmentation approach based on normalized cut
(Ncut) by solving an eigensystem, which was proposed by
Shi and Malik [3] .In recent years, Ncut algorithm is widely
used for image processing and related fields, such as the
c
978-1-4244-6349-7/10/$26.00 2010 IEEE V7-293
motion picture [5], medical imaging [6], vector field [7] of
the segmentation. However, this approach is NP-hard
problem, the more pixels in the image, the larger the
generated graph of nodes is, which bring difficulties to solve
the algorithm.
Considering the above issues come from the two
algorithms, this paper designed a combination of both
methods, the specific algorithm can be find in the following
part.
II. THE MEAN SHIFT ALGORITHM AND THE NCUT
A. The Mean Shift Algorithm
Considering radially symmetric kernels satisfying
K ( x) = cd k (|| x ||2 ) , where cd > 0 ,which is chosen such
∞ ∞
that
∫
0
K ( x)dx = ∫ cd k (|| x ||2 )dx = 1 [note that k ( x)
0
is defined only for x ≥ 0 ]. k ( x ) is a monotonically
decreasing function , which is referred to the profile of the
kernel. Given the function g ( x ) = − k ′( x ) as profile, the
kernel G ( x ) is defined as G ( x) = cg , d g (|| x ||2 ) . For
n data points xi , i =1,…, n in the d -dimensional space Rd,
the mean shift vector is defined as
n
x − xi 2
∑ x g (||
i || )
h
mh ,G ( x) = n
i =1
−x (1)
x − xi 2
∑i =1
g (||
h
|| )
where x is the center of the kernel, and h is a bandwidth
parameter. Based on the above analysis, we present a brief
review of the image segmentation method based on the mean
shift procedure. Form the reference [4], we know that the
mean shift algorithm includes mean shift filtering and mean
shift segmentation. The segmentation is actually a merging
process performed on a region that is produced by the mean
shift filtering. The use of the mean shift segmentation
algorithm requires the selection of the bandwidth parameter
h=(hr,hs). By controlling the size of the kernel, the bandwidth
parameter can determines the resolution of the mode
detection.
B. The Ncut Algorithm
The set of points in an arbitrary feature space can be
described as a weighted undirected graph G= (V, E), where
the nodes of the graph are the points in the feature space, and
an edge is formed between every pair of nodes. The weight
on each edge,W(i,j), is a function of the similarity between
nodes i and j. A graph G= (V, E) can be partitioned into two
disjoint sets, A , B , A U B = V , A I B = ∅ ,we expected
that the intragroup similarity is high and the intergroup
similarity is low. In graph theoretic language, a mathematical
formulation of a cut is [3]
cut ( A, B ) = ∑ w(u , v )
u∈ A , v∈B
(2)
In this paper, we will use this normalized cut (Ncut) as the
partition criterion. The Ncut is
cut ( A, B ) cut ( A, B )
Ncut ( A, B ) = +
assoc ( A, V ) assoc( B, V )
(3)
where assoc ( A, V ) = ∑ w(u , v ) is the total connection
u∈ A , v∈V
from nodes in A to all nodes in the graph and
assoc ( B, V ) = ∑ w(u , v ) is similarly define. When we
u∈B , v∈V
obtain the least value of Ncut, that is the best image
segmentation.
III. THE IMPROVED IMAGE SEGMENTATION ALGORITHM
Normalized cut is proved to be NP-hard problem, when
the nodes of graph increases, the solution of the problem
becomes extremely complex, and the calculation of the
problem becomes large. Therefore, by incorporating the
advantages of the mean shift segmentation and the
normalized cut (Ncut) partitioning methods, the proposed
method preprocesses an image by using the mean shift
algorithm to form segmented regions, we use region nodes
instead of these regions, then use the Ncut method for region
nodes clustering. In many literatures, the Ncut method is
applied directly to image pixels. So for some large images,
the weight matrix W is large, which brings huge
computational complexity. However, the proposed method
offers a considerable reduction of computational complexity,
because the number of image region nodes is much smaller
than that of the pixels, the size of the weight matrix W is
significantly reduced. Moreover, the mean shift algorithm
not only removes noise, which limits the accuracy of graph
partitioning in the Ncut method, but also achieves improved
segmentation performance. Nonetheless, it will produce the
phenomenon of over-segmentation. The Ncut algorithm is a
global clustering method, it can compensate for the
phenomenon of over-segmentation, but it is very dependent
on the selection of classification parameter K. however,
mean shift is a non-supervised clustering segmentation
V7-294 2010 2nd International Conference on Computer Engineering and Technology
method, it is a good solution for solving the drawback of the
Nuct. This shows that the combination of the two methods is
also feasible. The proposed method consists of the following
steps:
1) An image is preprocessed into multiple separated
regions using the mean shift algorithm.
2) These regions are much smaller than the image pixels,
so we extracted each region, and use one region node instead
of one region. The information of the region nodes includes
features vector information and spatial location.
3) According to the step 2, these region nodes are
represented as a weighted undirected graph, the graph as the
Ncut algorithm input, and use these region nodes to construct
the weight matrix W, and then use the Ncut method for
region nodes clustering.
IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS AND ANALYSIS
In this paper, we demonstrate the superiority of the
proposed method by comparing the performance of the
proposed approach to existing methods using two images.
The weight W(i, j) between regions i and j is defined as
⎧ −|| X − X
2 2
−|| F( i ) − F( j ) ||2 (i ) ( j ) ||2 if i and j are adjacent
σ I2 ⎪ σ 2
Wij = e * ⎨e X
(4)
⎪⎩ 0 otherwise
where F(i)={ R(i) ,G(i) ,B(i)} is the color vector of region i, if
the image is the gray-level image, then F(i) is the gray value.
and X(i) is the spatial location of region node i. in this paper,
we defined the F(i) is the average gray of the region i, and
the X(i) is the center of the region i. in this case, the select of
F(i) and X(i) are more representative.
In order to compare other method to the proposed
algorithm, we use the example of two image, as depicted in
Fig. 1 and Fig. 2. Fig. 1 image size is 277×384. Fig. 1(a)
shows the original image, and Fig. 1(b) depicts the resultant
image after applying the mean shift algorithm, with the white
contours depicting the boundaries between the regions. We
set h=(hr,hs)=(8,8) and M=2000. As a result, the mean shift
algorithm produces 8 regions. This eight regions of R(i) in F(i)
is 34,51,54,75,78,82,84,and 193 respectively (from small to
large). The G(i) and B(i) are not list. Therefore, the
constructing the weight matrix W of the graph based on
region nodes using the Ncut algorithm is easier and smaller
than that based on pixels. Fig. 1(c) shows the partitioning
results by directly applying the Ncut algorithm to the image
pixels. With the partitioning parameter K=2 and table I
depicts the weight matrix W of the region nodes. Fig. 1(d) is
the grayscale display results of the proposed algorithm
partitioning. With the partitioning parameter K=2. Fig. 1(e)
shows the results of the proposed algorithm partitioning.
The Fig. 1 image includes the bird in the foreground and
the bulrush in the background. Therefore, an effection
segmentation algorithm should distinguish the bird from the
bulrush background. In Fig. 1(b), many separated regions are
segmented by mean shift algorithm, it is not a good segment
[Volume 7]
result. In Fig. 1(c), the Ncut algorithm is directly applied to
the image pixels, the image is partitioned into two parts.
from Fig. 1(d) and Fig. 1(e). the segment result distinguish
the bird from the bulrush background. So the proposed
method provides an improved performance compared to the
mean shift and the Ncut algorithm.
(a) (b)
(c) (d)
(e)
Fig. 1. (a) Original image. (b) The resultant image after applying the mean
shift algorithm. (c)The partitioning results by directly applying the Ncut
algorithm to the image pixels. (d)The results of the proposed algorithm
partitioning grayscale display. (e) The results of the proposed algorithm
partitioning.
The Fig. 2(a) size is 240×160. Set h=(hr,hs)=(6,4) and
M=10. With the partitioning parameter K=4. the analysis of
the segment result is the same as the Fig. 1.
Finally, we consider the computational cost of the
proposed algorithm and compare it with that of the Ncut
method. A PC with a 2.8-GHz Pentium CPU and 1G
memory is applied to carry out the computation of the
proposed method which consists of two sections. The first
section is to segment the original image using the mean shift
method. The second section is to partition the region nodes
by the mean shift method using the Ncut. The Ncut method
[3] requires 40-50 s to process the image of 277×384 pixels.
[Volume 7] 2010 2nd International Conference on Computer Engineering and Technology
When use the Ncut method, an image has to be decimated
into a size of 120×120, the required time is only 8-10 s.
Table II compares the computational cost between the
proposed algorithm and the Ncut method for the images
depicted in Fig. 1 and Fig. 2.
(a) (b)
(c) (d)
(e)
Fig. 2. (a) Original image. (b) The resultant image after applying the mean
shift algorithm. (c) The partitioning results by directly applying the Ncut
algorithm to the image pixels. (d) The results of the proposed algorithm
partitioning grayscale display. (e) The results of the proposed algorithm
partitioning.
V. CONCLUSION
In this paper, a novel image segmentation algorithm has
been proposed and designed based on the conventional mean
shift algorithm and Ncut algorithm. The effectiveness and
robustness of the proposed algorithm have verified by some
experimental results to express an improved performance
compared to the Ncut algorithm. Also, the significant
reduction to the computational cost of the proposed algorithm
in the experiments is favorable for practical applications.
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 REFERENCES
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density funtion, with application in pattern recognition,” IEEE Trans.
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[2] Y. Cheng, “Mean shift, mode seeking, and clustering,” IEEE Trans.
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799, 1995.
[3] J. Shi and J. Malik, “Normalized cuts and image segmentation,” IEEE
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[4] D. Comariciu and P. Meer, “Mean shift: a robust approach toward
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[5] J. Shi and J. Malik, “Motion segmentation and tracking using
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[6] J. Carballido-Gamio, S. J. Belongie, and S. Majumdar, “Normalized
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TABLE I. WEIGHT MATRIX W OF ALL REGION NODES

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
1 1 0.2257 0.4804 0 0 0 0 0
2 0.2257 1 0.2210 0.6888 0.2738 0 0 0
3 0.4804 0.2210 1 0 0.6706 0.0135 0.4260 0
4 0 0.6888 0 1 0.3291 0.1376 0 3.6470e-04
5 0 0.2738 0.6706 0.3291 1 0 0.7491 5.7401e-04
6 0 0 0.0135 0.1376 0 1 0.1418 0.0014
7 0 0 0.4260 0 0.7491 0.1418 1 5.4429e-04
8 0 0 0 3.6470e-04 5.7401e-04 0.0014 5.4429e-04 1

TABLE II. COMPARED COMPUTATIONAL COST BETWEEN THE PROPOSED METHOD AND THE NCUT METHOD
Time of the
Region num. of The value of Time of mean Time of Ncut Time of Ncut
proposed
mean shift the K shift (s) Merging (s) algorithm (s) [3]
method (s)
Fig.1 8 2 3.51 0.83 4.34 9.47
Fig.2 24 4 0.54 0.36 0.9 3.76

V7-296 2010 2nd International Conference on Computer Engineering and Technology [Volume 7]