A NEW MINIMUM-VARIANCE REGION GROWING ALGORITHM FOR IMAGE SEGMENTATION

Region growing is a very useful technique for image segmentation. Its efficiency mainly depends on its aggregation criterion. In the present paper, a new algorithm is proposed with a homogeneity criterion based on an adequate tuning between spatial neighbourhood and histogram nei ghbourhood. It differs from other techniques by reconsidering the pixe l (or voxel) assignments on each step by a process which minimizes var iance through special dilations. Thus, the region created by an initia l seed can be non-connected and possibly does not contain this seed. E xamples are given in dental surgery for 2D X-Ray images (and their ass ociated 3D block) and for 3D images acquired by the Morphometre, the n ew 3D scanner constructed by GEMSE (General Electric Medical Systems). (C) 1997 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.