A fast and effective fuzzy clustering algorithm for color image segmentation

A fast and effective fuzzy clustering algorithm is proposed. The algorithm splits an image into n×n blocks, and uses block variance to judge whether the block region is homogeneous. Mean and center pixel of each homogeneous block are extracted for feature. Each inhomogeneous block is split into separate pixels and the mean of neighboring pixels within a window around each pixel and pixel value are extracted for feature. Then cluster of homogeneous blocks and cluster of separate pixels from inhomogeneous blocks are carried out respectively according to different membership functions. In fuzzy clustering stage, the center pixel and center number of the initial clustering are calculated based on histogram by using mean feature. Then different membership functions according to comparative result of block variance are computed. Finally, modified fuzzy c-means with spatial information to complete image segmentation are used. Experimental results show that the proposed method can achieve better segmental results and has shorter executive time than many well-known methods.