Multilevel thresholding satellite image segmentation using chaotic coronavirus optimization algorithm with hybrid fitness function

Image segmentation is a critical step in digital image processing applications. One of the most preferred methods for image segmentation is multilevel thresholding, in which a set of threshold values is determined to divide an image into different classes. However, the computational complexity increases when the required thresholds are high. Therefore, this paper introduces a modified Coronavirus Optimization algorithm for image segmentation. In the proposed algorithm, the chaotic map concept is added to the initialization step of the naive algorithm to increase the diversity of solutions. A hybrid of the two commonly used methods, Otsu’s and Kapur’s entropy, is applied to form a new fitness function to determine the optimum threshold values. The proposed algorithm is evaluated using two different datasets, including six benchmarks and six satellite images. Various evaluation metrics are used to measure the quality of the segmented images using the proposed algorithm, such as mean square error, peak signal-to-noise ratio, Structural Similarity Index, Feature Similarity Index, and Normalized Correlation Coefficient. Additionally, the best fitness values are calculated to demonstrate the proposed method's ability to find the optimum solution. The obtained results are compared to eleven powerful and recent metaheuristics and prove the superiority of the proposed algorithm in the image segmentation problem.