On estimation of the number of image principal colors and color reduction through self-organized neural networks

A new technique suitable for reduction of the number of colors in a color image is presented in this article. It is based on the use of the image Principal Color Components (PCC), which consist of the image color components and additional image components extracted with the use of proper spatial features. The additional spatial features are used to enhance the quality of the final image. First, the principal colors of the image and the principal colors of each PCC are extracted. Three algorithms were developed and tested for this purpose. Using Kohonen self-organizing feature maps (SOFM) as classifiers, the principal color components of each PCC are obtained and a look-up table, containing the principal colors of the PCC, is constructed. The final colors are extracted from the look-up table entries through a SOFM by setting the number of output neurons equal to the number of the principal colors obtained for the original image. To speed up the entire algorithm and reduce memory requirements, a fractal scanning subsampling technique is employed. The method is independent of the color scheme; it is applicable to any type of color images and can be easily modified to accommodate any type of spatial features. Several experimental and comparative results exhibiting the performance of the proposed technique are presented. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Imaging Syst Technol, 12, 117–127, 2002; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI