Title: An approach to manage Hue and Saturation uncertainty addressed to colour segmentation algorithms

Authors: S. Romani, P. Sobrevilla, E. Montseny

Addresses: Computer Engineering and Mathematics Department, Rovira i Virgili University, 43007 Tarragona, Spain. ' Applied Mathematics II Department, Technical University of Catalonia, 08034 Barcelona, Spain. ' Computer Engineering and Industrial Systems Department, Technical University of Catalonia, 08028 Barcelona, Spain

Abstract: Variability of Hue and Saturation components is an important drawback for developing accurate colour image segmentation algorithms based on HSI spaces: input RGB noise gets unevenly amplified through RGB-to-HSI formulation. Therefore, some H–S values are intrinsically more uncertain than others. To quantify such uncertainty, we propose to use our Hue and Saturation reliability functions, which are defined on predicted standard deviations of colour samples. These functions provide a reliability degree of the H–S values of image pixels, so that any segmentation algorithm may ponder the relevance of input colour data.

Keywords: colour variability; HSI colour space; image processing; colour images; hue; saturation; segmentation algorithms; uncertainty.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISTA.2006.009915

International Journal of Intelligent Systems Technologies and Applications, 2006 Vol.1 No.3/4, pp.393 - 408

Published online: 01 Jun 2006 *

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