Fast recursive algorithm for infrared ship image segmentation

A novel infrared image segmentation algorithm for realizing infrared ship segmentation in the lower contrast and complicated background was presented. 2-D Otsu method not only considers the distribution of the gray information, but also takes advantage of the spatial neighbor information by using the 2-D histogram of the image, so it often gets better anti-noise performance. However, its time-consuming computation is often an obstacle in application. Particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm can realize parallel, random and self-adapt colony search, hence an algorithm for PSO-based local recursive 2-D Otsu segmentation was proposed here. This algorithm can also be used in other infrared image segmentations with complicated backgrounds.