A clustering approach for the separation of touching edges in particle images

The occurrence of touching objects in images of particulate systems is very common especially in the absence of dispersion methods during image acquisition. The separation of these touching particles is essential before accurate estimation of particle size and shape can be achieved from these images. In the current work, clustering approaches based on the fuzzy C-means algorithm are employed to identify the touching particle regions. Firstly, clustering in the multidimensional space of image features, e.g., standard deviation, gradient and range calculated in a certain neighborhood of each pixel, is performed to trap the touching regions. Then, in a novel proposed method, the clustering of pixel intensity itself into two fuzzy clusters is performed and a feature, referred to as the 'Fuzzy Range', is calculated for each pixel from its membership values in both clusters and is presented as a distinguishing feature of the touching regions. Both approaches are compared and the superiority of the latter method in terms of the non-necessity of neighborhood based calculations and minimum disfiguration is elucidated. The separation methods presented herein do not make any assumption about the shape of the particle as is undertaken in many methods reported elsewhere. The technique is proven to minimize greatly the deleterious effects of over-segmentation, as is the case with traditional watershed segmentation techniques, and consequently, it results in a superior performance.