Abstract: An image segmentation algorithm combined with image filtering by using component tree and fast region merging was proposed to deal with over-segmentation. Firstly, the component tree was used to represent the gradient image, the relative potential energy and its properties were computed according to the ordered extremism. Then the gra- dicnt image was filtered to reduce the local minima in preprocessing stage. Then, the watershed algorithm was applied to the filtered gradient image to get the pr}segmentation result. Finally, a fast region merging algorithm was used to merge the prcsegmentation regions based on the perfect scene criterion to get the final segmentation. Experimental re- sups show that image filtering by using component tree can reduce the local minima disc to the noise and reduce the o- ver-segmentation. It can help improve the region merging accuracy and processing speed greatly.

Key words: Image segmentation, Watershed, Component tree, Relative potential energy, Region merging