2011 4th International Congress on Image and Signal Processing1
Watershed Image Segmentation Based on
Nonlinear Combination Morphology Filter
XIA Ping1、2，TANG Tinglong2
(1. Institute of Intelligent Vision and Image Information, Three Gorges University , YiChang 443002,China )
(2. College of Electronic Engineering, Three Gorges University, YiChang 443002,China )
Abstract—Traditional watershed algorithm’ ability to inhibit
noise is not that strong, so causing regional minima and leading to
over-segmentation. So a watershed image segmentation algorithm
based on the nonlinear combination morphology filter has been
put forward. First of all, we define the nonlinear combination
morphology filter with opening–closing operators and
closing–opening operators for image filtering; Secondly, we
design a new morphology watershed algorithm with inner and
external marks, and also define the regional minima to inner
marks from the low frequency components of the gradients and
external marks between the region, the inner and external marks
changes along with the image information, thus has realized the
adaptive image segmentation. Simulation results show that the
new algorithm can reduce over-segmentation arising from false
local minima in a gradient image which is caused by the noise,
which could accurately realize the image segmentation.
Index Terms—Image Segmentation; Morphology
Watershed Algorithm; Gradient
I. INTRODUCTION
I MAGE segmentation is the premise of image recognition and
image understanding, whose purpose is to decompose an
image into a number of mutual non-overlapping areas with
same or similar nature. Segmentation’s quality effects
subsequent image processing, thus image segmentation is one
of hot points in image processing area. The image segmentation
algorithm based on morphology watershed [1~5] is most
frequently discussed.Traditional morphology watershed
algorithm is sensitive to noise, causing two main issues on
over-segmentation and computation time consuming,
pre-processing and region merging often are used to reduce
over-segmentation. Reference [2] proposes a fast watershed
segmentation algorithm which overcomes the heavy burden on
computation and time consuming, but can’t solve the problem
of over-segmentation. Reference [3] puts emphasis on region
merging to alleviate over-segmentation. However, due to a
large number of regions after watershed transform and heavy
computation during merging process, segmentation efficiency
is decreased while alleviating partial over-segmentation.
Reference [6] proposes a watershed algorithm and hierarchical
clustering segmentation algorithm based on MRF. The
algorithm merges the region in a consistent manner according
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to the visual areas, but faster than traditional hierarchical
clustering algorithm [2]. Reference[7] proposes a multiscale
morphology fusion watershed segmentation algorithm for
wavelet scale decomposition, obtaining different regions to
select different fusion rules with good segmentation results. In
this paper, we propose a watershed algorithm based on
nonlinear combination morphology filtering, which can reduce
the boundary problem of positioning’s inaccuracy, determine
the regional boundary more quickly and improve the efficiency
and accuracy of image segmentation.
II. NONLINEAR COMBINATION MORPHOLOGY FILTER
Morphology filter is a new type of nonlinear filter, image
noise particle caused by noise is quite different from
Filter;
morphology structure elements, using pre-defined structure
elements for matching or partial image correction, image filter
based on morphology extract the signal and suppress noise.
Morphology opening operations is a nonlinear low-pass filter,
different with traditional low-pass filter, in the large size
structure of spatial frequency domain, opening operation
allows only large structure pass so as to filter the small
structure. Thus, the opening operation can remove the isolated
point or peak pulse(i.e. noise point);similarly, the closing
operation’ function on dark features equals to the opening
operation on light features, it can remove the structures which
with dark background and whose size is smaller than structure
element.
Theorem: two-dimensioned digital information of finite
plane f ( x, y ) , ( x, y ∈ Z ) ,the output of morphology
opening-closing or closing–opening filter on the signal is the
median filter’ root signal, namely:
OC[ f ( x, y )] = med ∞ {OC[ f ( x, y )];W } (1)
∞
CO[ f ( x, y )] = med {CO[ f ( x, y )];W } (2)
Where, W denotes the window function of the median filter.
OC[ f ( x, y )]def [ f D B • B]( x, y )
CO[ f ( x, y )]def [ f • B D B]( x, y )
B denotes the structure element, in this paper is selected as:
B = {(−1,−1), (−1,0), (−1,1), (0,−1), (0,0), (0,1), (1,−1), (1,0), (1,1)}
Reference [8] has shown that morphology opening-closing,
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closing-opening and traditional median filter can all effectively
suppress pepper and salt noise in the image, preserving the
details of the image features.
Definition: using theorem (1)~(2) to define a combination
morphology filter h[ f ( x, y )] :
h[ f ( x, y )] = T {OC[ f ( x, y )], CO[ f ( x, y )]} (3)
Where h[ f ( x, y )] denotes the unit impulse response of the
combination morphology filter, L[⋅,⋅] denotes a linear
transformation operator, this article selects L[⋅,⋅] as:
T {OC[ f ( x, y )], CO[ f ( x, y )]} = a ⋅ OC[ f ( x, y )] + b ⋅ CO[ f ( x, y )]
and selects a = 310 ; b = 7 10 .
In this paper, selecting the combination morphology filter
defined in (3) to filter the processing images.
III. IMPROVED WATERSHED SEGMENTATION
A. Watershed algorithm
Watershed algorithm views an image as a topology terrain
map, which image gray values f ( x, y ) correspond to terrain
height values. Define N1 ， N 2 ， " ， N R as the coordinates
collection of local minima in image f ( x, y ) ; C ( N i ) as the
coordinates collection of a point, these points are located in the
local minima N i associated with the catchment
basin. T (n) denotes the collection of coordinate ( s, t ) ,in
which f ( s, t ) < n ,namely:
{ }
T ( n) = ( s , t ) f ( s , t ) < n ( 4)
Where T (n) denotes the midpoint of the set of coordinate
define the internal mark as: (1)areas surrounded by larger pixel
values; (2)the points of region has formed a connected
component; (3)all points of this connected component has the
same gray value. Using watershed algorithm on the smoothed
images, and limiting these internal markers only be to local
minima, obtaining watershed as an external marker. External
markers segment images into different regions, each region
contains a unique internal mark and partial background.
C. Improved watershed segmentation algorithm
1 Using nonlinear combination morphology filter for image
○
denoising;
2 Calculate the denoising image histogram to determine the
○
local extreme point as a mark within the region;
3 Determine the Euclidean distance of the pixel in ○
○ 2 which
is the nearest adjacent and non-zero, applying the distance
function to calculate the pixel distance;
○4 Calculate the external constraints of the whole image,
and mark the external constraints;
5 Apply the inside and outside constraints of the results to
○
reconstruct the gradient map, then segment the image.
IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Experiment with rice image, the results shown in figure 1,
figure 2 and table 1.
A. Filtering performance
Filtering performance and image restoration to be measured
with Mean Square Error (MSE) and Peak Signal to Noise Ratio
(PSNR):
1 M −1N −1

f ( x, y ) , (4)shows that the midpoints of the set are located MSE =

MN
∑ ∑[( f ′( x, y ) − f ( x, y)) 2 ] ( 6)
x = 0 y =0
below the plane f ( x, y ) = n .
255 2
As the water level increasing from n = f min + 1 to n = f man + 1 , PSNR = 10 lg M −1N −1
(7 )
1
the water will overflow the terrain. MN
∑∑ [( f ′( x, y) − f ( x, y)) 2
]
x =0 y =0
Define C n ( N i ) as the coordinate set of the midpoint of the
catchment basin, then:
Where, f ′( x, y ) denotes the filtered output image, the results
C n ( N i ) = C ( N i ) ∩ T ( n) (5)
shown in figure 1 and figure 2. Table 1 shows the performance
comparison of the three kinds of filtering algorithm.
If ( x, y ) ∈ C ( N i ) and ( x, y ) ∈ T (n) ,then C n ( N i ) = 1 located
( x, y ) ,else C n ( N i ) = 0 .That is, we only need to use “AND”
operator to separate the image in T (n) during the stage n of
water overflowing.

B. Mark
The key of based on marking method is to find a set of seeds
associated with the region of the image, the article finds the
local minima as marker associated with the each region from
the low-frequency components of original gradient image, the (a) Original image (b) Noise image(α=0.2)
approach is to seek the histogram of the image which noise has
been removed first, then determine local extreme point as seed
point on the probability of histogram’s gray level. Meanwhile,

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(c) Mark within constraints (d) Gradient image reconstruction

(e) Two-dimensional median filtering (f) This filtering algorithm

(e) This algorithm
Fig. 1 This filtering algorithm is compared with other denoising algorithms Fig.2 This algorithm is compared watershed segmentation algorithm

Table1. The filtering performance comparison of filtering algorithm Comparing figure 2(b) with figure 2(e), the external markers
segment the image into different regions effectively, each
region contains a unique internal mark and partial
Performance MSE PSNR(dB) background, so each region actually takes the unique
Comparison α=0.05 α=0.1 α=0.2 α=0.05 α=0.1 α=0.2
Opening-Closing 29.6619 42.4907 63.4969 35.1973 32.8900 30.1272
object and background into account. During the
Closing-Opening 29.6037 42.1422 62.1822 38.5718 36.5403 34.8109 watershed segmentation process, the gradient
Median filtering 28.8421 41.7137 60.0318 39.2113 37.9791 35.7619 information effects the segmentation results directly, the
This algorithm 28.4086 41.6226 59.7121 39.5037 38.0843 35.9459 impact of noise of the original image cause many false
Figure 1(b), image with pepper and salt noise, density α=0.2; local minima in the gradient image, resulting in
Figure 1(c), Figure 1(d), Figure 1(e) are opening-closing over-segmentation phenomenon; in this article, calculate the
operation filtering, closing-opening operation filtering and 3*3 gradient of image after composite morphology filtering, then
median filtering results comparison with the algorithm restraint method only processes the watershed which marks
proposed in this article shown in Figure 1(f), respectively. contained specific areas, segmentation algorithm proposed in
Table 1 shows the results of quantitative comparison. From the this article achieves a better performance compared to
results of filtering, the median filter closes to the algorithm traditional watershed algorithm.
proposed in this article, but image appears blurred after median
filtering, mainly due to loss of partial contour information, the V. CONCLUSIONS
loss of edge information is not conductive for image
This algorithm can effectively overcome noise and false
segmentation.
gradient information aroused by other conditions, so avoiding
over-segmentation, locating the boundaries of different regions
B. Segmentation performance of the image accurately, the effect of segmenting image is
Figure 2 shows the comparison of the segmentation better.
algorithm proposed in this article with traditional watershed
segmentation algorithm.
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