Segmenting an image

Image segmentation consists of partitioning an image into different regions that share certain characteristics. This is a fundamental task in computer vision, facial recognition, and medical imaging. For example, an image segmentation algorithm can automatically detect the contours of an organ in a medical image.

scikit-image provides several segmentation methods. In this recipe, we will demonstrate how to segment an image containing different objects.

How to do it...

1. Let's import the packages:

   In [1]: import numpy as np
           import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
           from skimage.data import coins
           from skimage.filter import threshold_otsu
           from skimage.segmentation import clear_border
           from skimage.morphology import closing, square
           from skimage.measure import regionprops, label
           from skimage.color import lab2rgb
           %matplotlib inline

2. We create a function that displays a grayscale image:

   In [2]: def show(img, cmap=None):
             ...