WATERSHED IMAGE

SEGMENTATION
Presented By :
Ashish Verma(Y6120)
Vishal Annapurve(Y6088)
INTRODUCTION
 Image segmentation is based on three principal concepts
 Detection of discontinuities
 Thresholding
 Region Processing
 Morphological Watershed Image Segmentation
embodies many of the concepts of above three
approaches
 Often produces more stable segmentation including
continuous segmentation boundaries
 Provides a simple framework for incorporating
knowledge based constraints
BASIC CONCEPTS
 Image is visualized in 3-dimensions
 2 spatial dimensions
 grey levels
 Any grey tone image can be considered as a topological
surface
CONTINUED….
 Topographical interpretation consist of three points
 Points belonging to regional minimum
 Catchment Basin or watershed
 Divide lines or watershed lines
 Main aim of the segmentation algorithm based on this
concept is to find watershed lines
VISUALISATION
 Punch the regional minimum and flood the entire
topography at uniform rate from below
 A dam is built to prevent the rising water from distinct
catchment basins from merging
 Eventually only the tops of the dams are visible above
the water line
 These dam boundaries correspond to the divide lines of
the watersheds
DIFFERENT LEVELS OF FLOODING
CONTD….
 In topographical view shown earlier the height of the
mountains was proportional to the grey scale value of the
original image
 Water level is rising in consecutive images shown in the
previous slide
 In order to prevent water from spilling out of the
structure we imagine the entire topography to be
enclosed by dams of height greater than highest possible
mountain
 The value of the height is determined by the highest
possible gray-level value in the input image
DAM CONSTRUCTION
 Dam construction is based on binary images, which are
members of 2-D integer space
 The dam must be built to keep water from spilling
across the basins.
 Let M1 and M2 be the set of coordinates of the points in

the two regional minima.

 The set of coordinates of the points in the catchment
basin associated with the two minima in the flooding
level n be Cn(M1) and Cn(M2).
 Let the Union of these sets be C[n].
CONTD….
CONTD….
 Now let q denote the connected component formed in the
figure b by dilation from flooding stage n -1 to stage n
 The dilation of the connected components by the
structuring element in figure 3 is subjected to 2
conditions
 The dilation has to be constrained to q
 The center of the structuring element can be located
only at the points of q during dilation
 The dilation cannot be performed on the set of points that
may cause the sets being dilated to merge
CONTD….
 Condition 1 is satisfied by every point during dilation
and condition 2 did not apply to any point during dilation
process in the first figure
 In figure 2 several points fail the condition 1 while
meeting condition 2 resulting in broken perimeter shown
in the figure
 In figure 4, 1-pixel cross-hatched path shows the desired
separating dam at the nth stage of flooding
 Construction of dam at this level of flooding is completed by
setting all the points in the path just determined to the value
greater than maximum gray-level value in the image
WATERSHED SEGMENTATION
ALGORITHM
 Let M1, M2, M3….Mn be the sets of coordinates of points
in the regional minima of the image g(x,y)
 C(Mi) be the coordinates of points of the catchment basin

associated with regional minima Mi

 T[n] = { (s,t) | g(s,t) < n }
 T[n] = Set of points in g(x,y) which are lying below
the plane g(x,y) = n
 n = Stage of flooding, varies from min+1 to max+1
 min = minimum gray level value
 max = maximum gray level value
CONTD….
 Let Cn(M1) be the set of points in the catchment basin
associated with M1 that are flooded at stage n.


 Cn(Mi) = 1 at location (x,y) if (x,y) Є C(Mi)

 AND (x,y) Є T[n], otherwise it is 0.
 C[n] be the union of flooded catchment basin portions at
the stage n
 =>

 =>
ALGORITHM CONTD….
 Algorithm keeps on increasing the level of flooding, and
during the process Cn(Mi) and T[n] either increase or
remain constant.
 Algorithm initializes C[min +1] = T[min+1], and then
proceeds recursively assuming that at step n C[n-1] has
been constructed.
 Let Q be set of connected components in T[n].

 For each connected component q Є Q[n], there are three

possibilities:
CONTD….
 Condition (a) occurs when a new minima is encountered,
in this case q is added to set C[n-1] to form C[n].
 Condition (b) occurs when q lies within a catchment
basin of some regional minima, in that case
 Condition (c) occurs when ridge between two catchment
basins is hit and further flooding will cause the waters
from two basins will merge, so a dam must be built
within q.
DAM CONSTRUCTION
 As shown in the previous images, a one pixel thick dam
can be constructed when needed by dilating q ∩ C[n-1]
with a 3 × 3 Structuring matrix of 1’s and constraining
the dilation to q.
 Algorithm efficiency can be improved by using only
values of n that correspond to existing gray level values
in g(x,y).
 Histogram of g(x,y) can be used to evaluate min, max
and these values.
GRADIENT OF IMAGE
 Regions of the image characterized by small variations
in gray levels have small gradient values, so watershed
segmentation is applied on the gradient of the image
rather than the actual image.
 In this way, the regional minima of catchment basins
correlate nicely with the small value of the gradients
corresponding to the objects of interest.
RESULTS WITH THE IMAGE GRADIENT
USE OF MARKERS
 Direct application of the watershed segmentation
algorithm generally lead to over-segmentation of an
image due to noise and other local irregularities of the
gradient.
 This can render the result to be virtually useless.

 Solution is to limit the number of allowable regions by

incorporating a preprocessing stage designed to bring
additional knowledge into the segmentation procedure.
 A concept of markers is used as a solution, a Marker is a
connected component belonging to an image.
OVER-SEGMENTATION
MARKERS CONTD….
 Selection of markers consists of two principal steps:
 Preprocessing
 Definition of a set of criteria

 There two types of markers:

 External : associated with the background
 Internal : associated with the objects of interest

 In the previous image due to large number of potential

minima, image is over-segmented.
MARKERS CONTD….
 An effective measure to minimize the effect of small
spatial details is to filter the image with a smoothing
filter.
 i.e. a Preprocessing step.
 For example, we can define the Internal markers
to be :
 region surrounded by the higher altitude points.
 every region should be a connected component
 every point in the region should have same gray level
value.
 External markers can be some regions of particular
background color.
SEGMENTATION PARADIGM
ROAD SEGMENTATION
COFFEE BEANS SEPERATION
CLEAVAGE FRACTURE IN STEEL
REFERENCES
 Digital Image Processing by R.Gonzalez
 http://cmm.ensmp.fr/~beucher/wtshed.html
THANK YOU