Object-based classification using region growing segmentation

A region merging segmentation technique is suggested in this paper for the object-based classification of high-spatial resolution imagery. It employs a region growing scheme based on the region adjacency graph (RAG). The proposed algorithm uses directional neighbor-line average feature vectors to improve the quality of segmentation. The feature vector consists of 9 components which includes an observation and 8 directional averages. The merging coefficients of the segmentation process use a part of the feature components according to a given merging coefficient order. This study performed the extensive experiments using simulation data and a real high-spatial resolution data of IKONOS. The experimental results show that the new approach proposed in this study is quite effective to provide segments of high quality for the object based analysis of high-spatial resolution images.