A Novel Quantum Inspired Sperm Whale Meta-heuristic for Image Thresholding

Thresholding is a renowned, simple and efficient technique/tool in image segmentation. A novel quantum inspired technique is designed on the basis of the lifestyle of sperm whales. The fundamentals of quantum features are combined with a meta-heuristic approach for designing the proposed technique. The efficiency of the proposed technique is judged in comparison with two other techniques for four test images with reference to optimal thresholds at diverse levels, the mean, standard deviation of all fitness values over different runs and the computational time. Furthermore, for all techniques, the quality of image thresholding is also judged by calculating the values of peak signal-to-noise ratio at various levels. Moreover, the supremacy of the proposed technique is statistically established by using Friedman test among all competitors. Finally, the efficiency of the proposed technique is visually exhibited by presenting convergence curves for all test images. Hence, the efficiency is visually and quantitatively established for the proposed technique in all respects.