Color Image Segmentation in the Color and Spatial Domains

In this paper we describe a color image segmentation system that performs color clustering in a color space followed by color region segmentation in the image domain. In color space, we describe two different algorithms that cluster similar colors using different criteria and present our evaluation results on these two algorithms in comparison with three well-known color segmentation algorithms. The region segmentation algorithm merges clusters in the image domain based on color similarity and spatial adjacency. We developed three different methods for merging regions in the image domain. The color image segmentation system has been implemented and tested on a variety of color images, including satellite images and moving car images. The system has shown to be both effective and efficient.