Ali Al Helbawi

Image Processing
Dr Mohammad Raad

A Threshold Selection Method from Gray-Level Histograms

The problem the paper addresses

In an ideal case, the histogram has a deep and sharp valley between two peaks representing objects
and background, respectively, so that the threshold can be chosen at the bottom of this valley.
However, for most real pictures, it is often difficult to detect the valley bottom precisely, especially
in such cases as when the valley is flat and broad, imbued with noise, or when the two peaks are
extremely unequal in height, often producing no traceable valley.

Previous techniques proposed before to overcome these difficulties:

Valley sharpening technique: large absolute values of derivative is restricted to the pixels
of histogram (Laplacian or gradient)
Difference histogram method, which selects the maximal amount of difference with the
threshold at the gray level.
These first two methods are for neighboring pixels or edges
Parametric technique: deals directly with the gray-level histogram
Gaussian Distributions and statistical decision (unstable calculations)
All these techniques proposed before did not evaluate a goodness threshold

The underlying theory used to develop the solution.

A new technique is proposed from the perspective of discriminant analysis; it directly
approaches the possibility of evaluating the "goodness" of threshold and automatically
selecting a best threshold. Also this technique is extended into multi thresholds, which is a
straightforward by virtue of the discriminant criterion.

The evidence provided by the author to support the conclusions of the paper.
A) Selecting one optimal threshold:
Formulation:
Image pixels are represented in gray levels denoted as L, number of pixels at level i
is denoted by ni thus the total number of pixels N= n1+n2++nL
The gray-level histogram is normalized and observed as a probability distribution
having this formula

Pixels are dichotomized into two classes background C0 and objects C1 by a

threshold level k; C0 are pixels with levels 1 to k whereas C1 from k+1 to L. the
formulas given below correspond to probabilities and the class mean levels.
 Total mean level of original image

Relation for any value of k

The class variances are given by

The following discriminant criterion measures (or measures of class separation) used in
the discriminant analysis to evaluate the "goodness" of the threshold (at level k):

The problem is reduced to an optimization problem to search for a threshold k that

maximizes one of the object functions (the criterion measures) in (12).
The following basic relation always holds:

The best threshold k* that maximizes the mean, or equivalently maximizes the variance of
(14) is selected in the following consecutive search by using the simple cumulative quantities
(6) and (7), or explicitly (6) using (2)-(5):
 The range of k over which the maximum is required can be restricted to

The effective range of gray-level

histogram;

B) Extension to Multi Thresholds

Formulation:
Three-thresholds case:
Assume two thresholds: 1k1 <k2 <L and three separating classes C0, C1, and C.
The variance will be function of two variables k1 and k2 and optimal thresholds k1* and k2*
is selected to maximize the variance.

If the number of classes increase it will become more and more complicated, this method is
very simple for M=2 and M=3.
The level to which the solution addresses the problem
Experimental Results:
Image size: 64x64
Fig1-3 specifications
Figures (a) and (e): Original gray-scale image
Figures (b) and (f): Result of thresholding
Figures (c) and (g): set of the gray-scale histogram
Figures (d) and (h): result obtained by the analysis
 Figure1: Application to characters, L=16
This experiment is an application for identical character typewritten in different ways.

Figure2: Application to textures L=64

In this example the histograms typically show the difficult case of a broad and flat valley in (c) and w
unimodal peak in (g).
 Figure3: Application to cells; using multi thresholds L=32 in (a) and 256 in (e)
In this example a three multi thresholds has been applied to cell images and show a good results where C0 for
the background, C1 for the cytoplasm, and C2 for nucleus

The parts of the problem that the authors say need further study and why.
It is difficult to apply more than three-thresholds.
A lot of experimental results on several examples have been applied show that the current method is
derived theoretically, is of satisfactory practical use.
In Figures1 and 2 we can see that the criterion is always smooth and unimodal, the hard proof of the
unimodality has not yet been obtained
The method suggested in this correspondence may be recommended as the most simple and standard
one for automatic threshold selection that can be applied to various practical problems.