Otsu multilevel thresholding segmentation based on quantum particle swarm optimisation algorithm

Otsu threshold segmentation is one of the most representative methods for image segmentation. Compared with multilevel threshold segmentation, Otsu method is computationally complex and time-consuming. In this paper, a multilevel thresholding algorithm based on the Quantum Particle Swarm Optimisation (QPSO) is proposed. QPSO combines the classical PSO algorithm with quantum theory. Because of the high effectiveness of QPSO optimisation algorithm, the paper combines this algorithm with Otsu and uses them in multilevel threshold image segmentation. Experiments show that the algorithm can not only realise the image multilevel threshold segmentation, but also make the segmentation more efficient. © 2016 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.