Method and system of identifying a valid object in a background of an image using a gray level co-occurrence matrix of the image

A method of identifying at least one valid object having at least one predetermined attribute value in a background, comprising the steps of:

• (a) generating an image of the object and the background;
• (b) generating a gray level co-occurrence matrix representative of the entire image, the gray level co-occurrence matrix having an entropy function;
• (c) generating a plurality of gray level quadrants of the image from the co-occurrence matrix, each gray level quadrant having a respective entropy function;
• (d) automatically selecting a threshold gray level value for each gray level quadrant such that the entropy function of each quadrant is maximized;
• (e) searching the image using the automatically selected threshold gray level value for each quadrant for at least one candidate object,
• wherein the candidate object has at least one candidate object attribute value;
• and
• (f) validating the candidate object having the valid object predetermined attribute value to identify the valid object.

A method of identifying at least one valid object in a background, wherein the valid object has at least one predetermined attribute defined by at least one predetermined attribute value, comprising the steps of:

• (a) generating an image of an object and a background;
• (b) generating a gray level co-occurrence matrix of the image, the gray level co-occurrence matrix having an entropy function;
• (c) entropically selecting a threshold gray level value such that the entropy function of the co-occurrence matrix is maximized;
• (d) searching the image using the entropically selected threshold gray level value for at least one candidate object, each candidate object having at least one candidate object attribute value;
• (e) validating the candidate objects found in step (d) having a valid object predetermined attribute value to identify a valid object;
• (f) partitioning the gray level co-occurrence matrix into a first through fourth quadrant, respectively, using the entropic threshold gray level value as defined by step (c) as an upper delimiter and a lower delimiter, wherein the first quadrant defines an upper matrix for a diagonal case, the second quadrant defines an upper matric for an off-diagonal case, the third quadrant defines a lower matrix for the diagonal case, and the fourth quadrant defines a lower matrix for the off-diagonal case;
• and
• (g) recursively repeating steps (c)-(f) for each of the upper and lower matrices for the diagonal or the off-diagonal case, respectively, wherein the repetition of step (c) selects a next successive entropic threshold gray level, thereby recursively partitioning the gray level co-occurrence matrix until a predetermined minimum number of new valid objects is identified.