Comparative Analysis of Evaluation Methods for Image Segmentation Results

초록

Although image segmentation is a critical part of object-based analysis of high resolution imagery, there has been lack of studies to evaluate the quality of image segmentation. In this study, we aimed to find practical and effective methods to obtain optimal parameters for image segmentation. Evaluations of image segmentation are divided into unsupervised, supervised, and qualitative visual interpretation methods. Using the multispectral UAV images, sampled from urban and forest over the Incheon Metropolitan City Park, three evaluation methods were compared. In overall, three methods showed very similar results regardless of the computational costs and applicability, although the optimal parameters determined by the evaluations were different between the urban and forest images. There is no single measure that outperforms in the unsupervised evaluation. Any combinations of intra-segment measures (V, COV, WV) and inter-segment measures (MI, BSH, DTNP) provided almost the same results. Although supervised method may be biased by subjective selection of reference data, it can be easily applied to detect object of interest. The qualitative visual interpretation on the segmentation results corresponded with the unsupervised and supervised evaluations.

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