Unsupervised vector image segmentation by a tree structure-ICM algorithm

In recent years, many image segmentation approaches have been based on Markov random fields (MRF's). The main assumption of the MRF approaches is that the class parameters are known or can be obtained from training data. In this paper we propose a novel method that relaxes this assumption and allows for simultaneous parameter estimation and vector image segmentation. The method is based on a tree structure (TS) algorithm which is combined with Besag's iterated conditional modes (ICM) procedure. The TS algorithm provides a mechanism for choosing initial cluster centers needed for initialization of the ICM. Our method has been tested on various one-dimensional (1-D) and multidimensional medical images and shows excellent performance. In this paper we also address the problem of cluster validation. We propose a new maximum a posteriori (MAP) criterion for determination of the number of classes and compare its performance to other approaches by computer simulations.