Improved Unsupervised Color Segmentation Using a Modified HSV Color Model and a Bagging Procedure in K-Means++ Algorithm

Abstract

Accurate color image segmentation has stayed as a relevant topic between the researches/scientific community due to the wide range of application areas such as medicine and agriculture. A major issue is the presence of illumination variations that obstruct precise segmentation. On the other hand, the machine learning unsupervised techniques have become attractive principally for the easy implementations. However, there is not an easy way to verify or ensure the accuracy of the unsupervised techniques; so these techniques could lead to an unknown result. This paper proposes an algorithm and a modification to the HSV color model in order to improve the accuracy of the results obtained from the color segmentation using the K-means++ algorithm. The proposal gives better segmentation and less erroneous color detections due to illumination conditions. This is achieved shifting the hue and rearranging the H equation in order to avoid undefined conditions and increase robustness in the color model.