graythresh (Image Processing Toolbox User's Guide)

Image Processing Toolbox User's Guide

Compute global image threshold using Otsu's method

Syntax

level = graythresh(I)
[level EM] = graythresh(I)

Description

level = graythresh(I) computes a global threshold (level) that can be used to convert an intensity image to a binary image with im2bw. level is a normalized intensity value that lies in the range [0, 1].

The graythresh function uses Otsu's method, which chooses the threshold to minimize the intraclass variance of the black and white pixels.

Multidimensional arrays are converted automatically to 2-D arrays using reshape. The graythresh function ignores any nonzero imaginary part of I.

[level EM] = graythresh(I) returns the effectiveness metric, EM, as the second output argument. The effectiveness metric is a value in the range [0 1] that indicates the effectiveness of the thresholding of the input image. The lower bound is attainable only by images having a single gray level, and the upper bound is attainable only by two-valued images.

Class Support

The input image I can be of class uint8, uint16, int16, single,or double and it must be nonsparse. The return value level is a double scalar. The effectiveness metric EM is a double scalar.

Example

I = imread('coins.png');
level = graythresh(I);
BW = im2bw(I,level);
imshow(BW)

See Also

im2bw

Reference

Otsu, N., "A Threshold Selection Method from Gray-Level Histograms," IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Vol. 9, No. 1, 1979, pp. 62-66.

grayslice histeq