research-article

Watersheds in Digital Spaces: An Efficient Algorithm Based on Immersion Simulations

Authors:

Pierre SoilleAuthors Info & Claims

IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, Volume 13, Issue 6

Pages 583 - 598

https://doi.org/10.1109/34.87344

Published: 01 June 1991 Publication History

Abstract

A fast and flexible algorithm for computing watersheds in digital gray-scale images is introduced. A review of watersheds and related motion is first presented, and the major methods to determine watersheds are discussed. The algorithm is based on an immersion process analogy, in which the flooding of the water in the picture is efficiently simulated using of queue of pixel. It is described in detail provided in a pseudo C language. The accuracy of this algorithm is proven to be superior to that of the existing implementations, and it is shown that its adaptation to any kind of digital grid and its generalization to n-dimensional images (and even to graphs) are straightforward. The algorithm is reported to be faster than any other watershed algorithm. Applications of this algorithm with regard to picture segmentation are presented for magnetic resonance (MR) imagery and for digital elevation models. An example of 3-D watershed is also provided.

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Index Terms

Watersheds in Digital Spaces: An Efficient Algorithm Based on Immersion Simulations
1. Computing methodologies
  1. Artificial intelligence
    1. Computer vision
      1. Computer vision problems
        Image segmentation
        Video segmentation
      2. Computer vision representations
        Shape representations
  2. Computer graphics
    1. Image manipulation
2. Mathematics of computing
  1. Discrete mathematics

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Published In

cover image IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence

IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence Volume 13, Issue 6

June 1991

111 pages

ISSN:0162-8828

Editor:
Anil K. Jain
Michigan State Univ., East Lansing, MI

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Copyright © Copyright © 1991 IEEE. All Rights Reserved.

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IEEE Computer Society

United States

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Published: 01 June 1991

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