A multilevel image thresholding using the honey bee mating optimization

Image thresholding is an important technique for image processing and pattern recognition. Many thresholding techniques have been proposed in the literature. Among them, the maximum entropy thresholding (MET) has been widely applied. In this paper, a new multilevel MET algorithm based on the technology of the honey bee mating optimization (HBMO) is proposed. This proposed method is called the maximum entropy based honey bee mating optimization thresholding (MEHBMOT) method. Three different methods such as the particle swarm optimization (PSO), the hybrid cooperative-comprehensive learning based PSO algorithm (HCOCLPSO) and the Fast Otsu’s method are also implemented for comparison with the results of the proposed method. The experimental results manifest that the proposed MEHBMOT algorithm can search for multiple thresholds which are very close to the optimal ones examined by the exhaustive search method. In comparison with the other three thresholding methods, the segmentation results using the MEHBMOT algorithm is the best and its computation time is relatively low. Furthermore, the convergence of the MEHBMOT algorithm can rapidly achieve and the results validate that the proposed MEHBMOT algorithm is efficient.