multithresh
Multilevel image thresholds using Otsu’s method
Description
returns
the single threshold value thresh
= multithresh(A
)thresh
computed for
image A
using Otsu’s method. You can use thresh
as
an input argument to imquantize
to
convert an image into a two-level image.
returns thresh
= multithresh(A
,N
)thresh
a 1-by-N
vector containing
N
threshold values using Otsu’s method. You can use
thresh
as an input argument to imquantize
to convert image A
into an image with
N+1
discrete levels.
Examples
Segment Image Into Two Regions
Read and display an image.
I = imread("coins.png");
imshow(I)
Calculate a single threshold value for the image.
level = multithresh(I);
Segment the image into two regions using the imquantize
function, specifying the threshold level returned by the multithresh
function. Display the result.
seg_I = imquantize(I,level); imshow(seg_I,[])
Segment Image into Three Levels Using Two Thresholds
Read an image, convert it to grayscale, and display the result.
I = imread("foggysf2.jpg"); I = rgb2gray(I); imshow(I) title("Grayscale Image")
Calculate two threshold levels.
thresh = multithresh(I,2);
Segment the image into three levels using the imquantize
function.
labels = imquantize(I,thresh);
Convert the segmented image into a color image using the label2rgb
function, and display the image.
labelsRGB = label2rgb(labels);
imshow(labelsRGB)
title("Segmented Image")
Compare Thresholding Entire Image Versus Plane-by-Plane Thresholding
Read and display an RGB image.
I = imread("peppers.png"); imshow(I) title("RGB Image");
Generate thresholds for seven levels from the entire RGB image.
threshRGB = multithresh(I,7);
Generate thresholds for each plane of the RGB image.
threshForPlanes = zeros(3,7); for i = 1:3 threshForPlanes(i,:) = multithresh(I(:,:,i),7); end
Process the entire image with the set of threshold values computed from entire image.
value = [0 threshRGB(2:end) 255]; quantRGB = imquantize(I, threshRGB, value);
Process each RGB plane separately using the threshold vector computed from the given plane. Quantize each RGB plane using threshold vector generated for that plane.
quantPlane = zeros(size(I)); for i = 1:3 value = [0 threshForPlanes(i,2:end) 255]; quantPlane(:,:,i) = imquantize(I(:,:,i),threshForPlanes(i,:),value); end quantPlane = uint8(quantPlane);
Display both posterized images and note the visual differences in the two thresholding schemes.
montage({quantRGB,quantPlane})
title("Full RGB Image Quantization vs. Plane-by-Plane Quantization")
To compare the results, calculate the number of unique RGB pixel vectors in each output image. Note that the plane-by-plane thresholding scheme yields about 23% more colors than the full RGB image scheme.
dim = size(quantRGB); quantRGBmx3 = reshape(quantRGB,prod(dim(1:2)),3); quantPlanemx3 = reshape(quantPlane,prod(dim(1:2)),3); colorsRGB = unique(quantRGBmx3,"rows"); disp("Unique colors in RGB image: "+length(colorsRGB));
Unique colors in RGB image: 188
colorsPlane = unique(quantPlanemx3,"rows"); disp("Unique colors in plane-by-plane image: "+length(colorsPlane));
Unique colors in plane-by-plane image: 231
Check Results Using the Metric Output Argument
Read an image.
I = imread('circlesBrightDark.png');
Find all unique grayscale values in image.
uniqLevels = unique(I(:));
disp("Number of unique levels = "+length(uniqLevels));
Number of unique levels = 148
Compute a series of thresholds at monotonically increasing values of N
.
Nvals = [1 2 4 8]; for i = 1:length(Nvals) [thresh, metric] = multithresh(I, Nvals(i) ); disp("N = "+Nvals(i)+" | metric = "+metric); end
N = 1 | metric = 0.54767 N = 2 | metric = 0.98715 N = 4 | metric = 0.99648 N = 8 | metric = 0.99902
Apply the set of 8 threshold values to obtain a 9-level segmentation using imquantize
.
seg_Neq8 = imquantize(I,thresh); uniqLevels = unique(seg_Neq8(:))
uniqLevels = 9×1
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Threshold the image using seg_Neq8
as an input to multithresh
. Set N
equal to 8, which is 1 less than the number of levels in this segmented image. multithresh
returns a metric
value of 1.
[thresh,metric] = multithresh(seg_Neq8,8)
thresh = 1×8
1.8784 2.7882 3.6667 4.5451 5.4549 6.3333 7.2118 8.1216
metric = 1
Threshold the image again, this time increasing the value of N
by 1. This value now equals the number of levels in the image. Note how the input is degenerate because the number of levels in the image is too few for the number of requested thresholds. Hence, multithresh
returns a metric
value of 0.
[thresh, metric] = multithresh(seg_Neq8,9)
Warning: No solution exists because the number of unique levels in the image are too few to find 9 thresholds. Returning an arbitrarily chosen solution.
thresh = 1×9
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
metric = 0
Input Arguments
A
— Image to be thresholded
numeric array
Image to be thresholded, specified as a numeric array of any dimension.
multithresh
finds the thresholds based on the aggregate histogram of the
entire array. multithresh
considers an RGB image as a 3-D numeric array
and computes the thresholds for the combined data from all three color planes.
multithresh
uses the range of the input
image A
, [min(A(:)) max(A(:))]
,
as the limits for computing the histogram used in subsequent computations. multithresh
ignores
any NaNs
in computation. Any Infs
and -Infs
are
counted in the first and last bin of the histogram, respectively.
For degenerate inputs where the number of unique values in A
is
less than or equal to N
, there is no viable solution
using Otsu's method. For such inputs, the return value thresh
contains
all the unique values from A
and possibly some
extra values that are chosen arbitrarily.
Data Types: single
| double
| int16
| uint8
| uint16
N
— Number of threshold values
1
(default) | positive integer
Number of threshold values, specified as a positive integer. For N > 2
,
multithresh
uses search-based optimization of Otsu's criterion to find
the thresholds. The search-based optimization guarantees only locally optimal results. Since
the chance of converging to local optimum increases with N
, it is
preferable to use smaller values of N
, typically N <
10
. The maximum allowed value for N
is 20.
Data Types: single
| double
| int8
| int16
| int32
| int64
| uint8
| uint16
| uint32
| uint64
Output Arguments
thresh
— Set of threshold values
1-by-N
numeric vector
Set of threshold values used to quantize an image, returned as a
1-by-N
numeric vector, whose data type is the same as image
A
.
These thresholds are in the same range as the input image A
, unlike
the graythresh
function, which returns a normalized threshold in the range [0,
1].
metric
— Measure of effectiveness
number in the range [0, 1]
Measure of the effectiveness of the thresholds, returned as a number in the range [0, 1].
Higher values indicates greater effectiveness of the thresholds in separating the input image
into N
+1 classes based on Otsu's objective criterion. For degenerate
inputs where the number of unique values in A
is less than or equal to
N
, metric
equals 0.
Data Types: double
References
[1] Otsu, N., "A Threshold Selection Method from Gray-Level Histograms," IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Vol. 9, No. 1, 1979, pp. 62-66.
Extended Capabilities
C/C++ Code Generation
Generate C and C++ code using MATLAB® Coder™.
Usage notes and limitations:
multithresh
supports the generation of C code (requires MATLAB® Coder™). Note that if you choose the genericMATLAB Host Computer
target platform,multithresh
generates code that uses a precompiled, platform-specific shared library. Use of a shared library preserves performance optimizations but limits the target platforms for which code can be generated. For more information, see Types of Code Generation Support in Image Processing Toolbox.The input argument
N
must be a compile-time constant.
GPU Code Generation
Generate CUDA® code for NVIDIA® GPUs using GPU Coder™.
Usage notes and limitations:
The input argument
N
must be a compile-time constant.
Version History
Introduced in R2012b
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