Multiple objects segmentation based on maximum-likelihood estimation and optimum entropy-distribution (MLE-OED)

A new method based on MLE-OED is proposed for unsupervised image segmentation of multiple objects which have fuzzy edges. It adjusts the parameters of a mixture of Gaussian distributions via minimizing a new loss function proposed to implement image segmentation based on the image´s local spatial information and global intensity distribution properties. The loss function consists of two terms: a local content fitting term, which optimizes the entropy distribution, and a global statistical fitting term, which maximizes the likelihood of the parameters for the given data. The proposed segmentation method was validated by simulated and real examples. The performance in the experiments is better than those of two popular methods.