Recursive Algorithms of Maximum Entropy Thresholding on Circular Histogram

Circular histogram thresholding is a novel color image segmentation method, which makes full use of the hue component color information of the image, so that the desired target can be better separated from the background. Maximum entropy thresholding on circular histogram is one of the exist circular histogram thresholding methods. However, this method needs to search for a pair of optimal thresholds on the circular histogram of two-class thresholding in an exhaustive way, and its running time is even longer than that of the existing circular histogram thresholding based on the Otsu criteria, so the segmentation efficiency is extremely low, and the real-time application cannot be realized. In order to solve this problem, a recursive algorithm of maximum entropy thresholding on circular histogram is proposed. Moreover, the recursive algorithm is extended to the case of multiclass thresholding. A large number of experimental results show that the proposed recursive algorithms are more efficient than brute force and the existing circular histogram thresholding based on the Otsu criteria.