Parallel Regional Segmentation Method of High-Resolution Remote Sensing Image Based on Minimum Spanning Tree

Abstract

With finer spatial scale, high-resolution images provide complex, spatial, and massive information on the earth’s surface, which brings new challenges to remote sensing segmentation methods. In view of these challenges, finding a more effective segmentation model and parallel processing method is crucial to improve the segmentation accuracy and process efficiency of large-scale high-resolution images. To this end, this study proposed a minimum spanning tree (MST) model integrated into a regional-based parallel segmentation method. First, an image was decomposed into several blocks by regular tessellation. The corresponding homogeneous regions were obtained using the minimum heterogeneity rule (MHR) partitioning technique in a multicore parallel processing mode, and the initial segmentation results were obtained by the parallel block merging method. On this basis, a regionalized fuzzy c-means (FCM) method based on master-slave parallel mode was proposed to achieve fast and optimal segmentation. The proposed segmentation approach was tested on high-resolution images. The results from the qualitative assessment, quantitative evaluation, and parallel analysis verified the feasibility and validity of the proposed method.