Efficient quantum inspired meta-heuristics for multi-level true colour image thresholding

Thresholding is a commonly used simple and effective technique for image segmentation. The computational time in multi-level thresholding significantly increases with the level of computation because of exhaustive searching, adding to exponential growth of computational complexity. Hence, in this paper, the features of quantum computing are exploited to introduce four different quantum inspired meta-heuristic techniques to accelerate the execution of multi-level thresholding. The proposed techniques are Quantum Inspired Genetic Algorithm, Quantum Inspired Simulated Annealing, Quantum Inspired Differential Evolution and Quantum Inspired Particle Swarm Optimization. The effectiveness of the proposed techniques is exhibited in comparison with the backtracking search optimization algorithm, the composite DE method, the classical genetic algorithm, the classical simulated annealing, the classical differential evolution and the classical particle swarm optimization for ten real life true colour images. The experimental results are presented in terms of optimal threshold values for each primary colour component, the fitness value and the computational time (in seconds) at different levels. Thereafter, the quality of thresholding is judged in terms of the peak signal-to-noise ratio for each technique. Moreover, statistical test, referred to as Friedman test, and also median based estimation among all techniques, are conducted separately to judge the preeminence of a technique among them. Finally, the performance of each technique is visually judged from convergence plots for all test images, which affirms that the proposed quantum inspired particle swarm optimization technique outperforms other techniques. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.