Affiliations: [a] School of Information Engineering, Heibei GEO University, Shijiazhuang, PR China | [b]
Hebei Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Information and Geo-Detection Technology, Shijiazhuang, PR China | [b] Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Heibei GEO University, Shijiazhuang, PR China
Abstract: Adding spatial penalty to fuzzy C-means (FCM) model is an important way to reduce the influence of noise in image segmentation. However, these improved algorithms easily cause segmentation failures when the image has the characteristics of unequal cluster sizes. Besides, they often fall into local optimal solutions if the initial cluster centers are improper. This paper presents a noise robust hybrid algorithm for segmenting image with unequal cluster sizes based on chaotic crow search algorithm and improved fuzzy c-means to overcome the above defects. Firstly, each size of clusters is integrated into the objective function of noise detecting fuzzy c-means algorithm (NDFCM), which can reduces the contribution of larger clusters to objective function and then the new membership degree and cluster centers are deduced. Secondly, a new expression called compactness, representing the pixel distribution of each cluster, is introduced into the iteration process of clustering. Thirdly, we use two- paths to seek the optimal solutions in each step of iteration: one path is produced by the chaotic crow search algorithm and the other is originated by gradient method. Furthermore, the better solutions of the two-paths go to next generation until the end of the iteration. Finally, the experiments on the synthetic and non–destructive testing (NDT) images show that the proposed algorithm behaves well in noise robustness and segmentation performance.
