New methods for contour detection and automatic thresholding

This paper presents two new approaches for optimum thresholding of gray-level images. The first algorithm utilizes an iterative thresholding scheme in conjunction with a golden-section optimization technique to determine the optimum threshold that maximizes the number of contours and the number of pixels in the contours. The second algorithm uses the same optimization technique to determine the optimum threshold that maximizes the average perimeter of the scene image.