A hierarchical genetic algorithm based approach for image segmentation

Image segmentation denotes a process by which an image is partitioned into non-intersecting regions and each region is homogeneous. Many approaches have been proposed for the monochrome image segmentation. Among these approaches, the clustering methods have been extensively investigated and used. In this paper, a clustering based approach using hierarchical genetic algorithm is proposed to tackle the problem of image segmentation. The main advantage of the proposed approach is that it can simultaneously estimate a proper number of regions and then partition the image into several homogeneous regions. The simulation results indicate that the proposed approach can produce more continuous and smoother images in comparison with two existing methods.