Image Segmentation by Size-Dependent Single Linkage Clustering of a Watershed Basin Graph

Abstract

We present a method for hierarchical image segmentation that defines a disaffinity graph on the image, over-segments it into watershed basins, defines a new graph on the basins, and then merges basins with a modified, size-dependent version of single linkage clustering. The quasilinear runtime of the method makes it suitable for segmenting large images. We illustrate the method on the challenging problem of segmenting 3D electron microscopic brain images.