Histogram Thresholding using Beam Theory and Ambiguity Measures

Issue title: New Frontiers in Scientific Discovery – Commemorating the Life and Work of Zdzislaw Pawlak

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Sen, Debashis | Pal, Sankar K.

Affiliations: Center for Soft Computing Research Indian Statistical Institute, 203 B.T. Road, Kolkata, West Bengal, India 700108. E-mail: {dsen_t,sankar}@isical.ac.in

Abstract: This paper presents a novel histogram thresholding technique based on the beam theory of solid mechanics and the minimization of ambiguity in information. First, a beam theory based histogram modification process is carried out. This beam theory based process considers a distance measure in order to modify the shape of the histogram. The ambiguity in the overall information given by the modified histogram is then minimized to obtain the threshold value. The ambiguity minimization is carried out using the theories of fuzzy and rough sets, where a new definition of rough entropy is presented. The applications of the proposed scheme in performing object and edge extraction in images are reported and compared with those of a few existing classical and ambiguity minimization based schemes for thresholding. Experimental results are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in terms of both qualitative and quantitative measures.

Keywords: Histogram thresholding, histogram modification, ambiguity minimization, fuzzy sets, rough sets, beam theory, object extraction, edge extraction

Journal: Fundamenta Informaticae, vol. 75, no. 1-4, pp. 483-504, 2007