Emerging region segmentation

An image segmentation scheme is presented which combines the desired features of region growing and watershed transform into a single framework. The segmentation process is guided by the edgeness profile of the image analogous to a topographic relief in which local minima act as seeds for segments. Growing regions are allowed to split in the catchment basins of the edgeness profile and merge at watersheds depending on the similarities of their regional intensity variations. The experiments show that the proposed segmentation scheme produces homogeneous regions with accurate boundaries and better segmentations than those produced by region growing or watershed transform followed by region merging.