Marker-based watershed segmentation embedded with edge information

This paper proposes an edge embedded marker-based watershed algorithm for high spatial resolution remote sensing image segmentation. Two improvement techniques are proposed for the two key steps of maker extraction and pixel labeling respectively to make it more effective and efficient for high spatial resolution image segmentation. Moreover, the edge information, detected by the edge detector embedded with confidence, is used to direct the two key steps for detecting objects with weak boundary and improving the positional accuracy of the objects boundary. Experiments on Quickbird image show that the proposed method performs well both in retaining the weak boundary and reducing the undesired over-segmentation.