Basic Adaptive Thresholding

Bill Ames
CIS 467
Spring `05
 Overview
• Thresholding is used to separate out
different parts of the histogram of an image
– Given the threshold of an image f(x,y) is an
object point if it is greater than the threshold
– Otherwise it is known as a background point
 Overview
• Illumination effects the histogram of an
image
• Where there is non-constant illumination,
the histogram of an image can be difficult to
threshold using one value, because the
background value will change from point to
point
 Example:

• This image, with the varing illumination would

look ugly if a global thresh hold was used
 Ex Con’t
• Namely, it would look like this:
 Solution
• Unlike global thresholding, which uses one
value of T, adaptive thresholding uses
multiple values
• Example:
– Two classes, background and object;
• T1 < (x,y) < T2

• Where f(x,y) > T1 = object and

• f(x,y) <= T0 = background
 Math Stuff
• The basic formula for local thresholding is:

– g(x,y) = 1 if (f(x,y) >= T(x,y)

– 0 if (f(x,y) < T(x,y)
Where:
T(x,y) = fo(x,y) + To(x,y)
Where fo is the morphological opening of f
and To is the threshold of that opening
 Math Con’t
• Before those values can be calculated, the
image has to be sub-divived.
• A threshold is computed for each sub-image
The image is then adjusted using the
multible thresholds on the various sub-
images
 In MATLAB
• Thresholds can be computed in MATLAB by
using either graythresh(image) or:
– T = .5*(double(min(f(:))) +
double(max((f(:))));
– done = false;
– while –done
• g = f >= T;
• Tnext = .5*(mean(f(g)) + mean(f(~g)));
• done = abs(T-Tnext) < .t;
• T = Tnext
– done
 In MATLAB
• Adaptive Thresholding can be done by
taking the morphological opening of an
image, then applying graythresh() to the
result.
• It can be shown to be equivalent to the
methods shown in the “Math” slides.
 In MATLAB
• That looks something like:
function [] = project(var1, var2, var3, var4)
• mod1 = imtophat(var1, strel(var2, var3, var4));
T = graythresh(mod1);
out = im2bw(mod1,T);
imshow(out);

Var1 is the image, var2-4 are the parameters to the

top-hat function, the output is displayed by the
function and there is no return value
 Examples
• The images used in the book for these
examples are not in the downloads, so I will
draw them for you, and you can pretend that
I am MATLAB when I transform the
images.
Reflection and Illumination
Basic Adaptive Thresholding
Basic Adaptive Thresholding
 Comments
• This method is not optimal
• Optimal Adaptive Thresholding creates a
Threshold that produces the minimum
average segment error
• It does this by lots of probability stuff that is
not covered in this presentation.
Questions?