Image segmentation using membrane computing: a literature survey

Abstract

Membrane computing, a recent branch of natural computing, has been gaining momentum attention in the last few decades due to its massive parallelism and efficient computation. Many researchers in the field of membrane computing have proposed sophisticated techniques inspired by cell biology for computer science applications, especially when they considered cell organization in tissues, organs, and most recently, from the organization of neurons. The interdisciplinary applications of membrane computing include, but not limited to computer science, biology, biomedicine, bioinformatics and several other fields such as mathematics, artificial intelligence, automation, economics, to name but a few. Their applications are pertaining to computer graphics, approximate optimization, cryptography, parallel computing and image processing. Hence, in this paper we present an up to date comprehensive literature review pertaining to the application of membrane computing in the area of digital image analysis, especially image segmentation, comprehensively and systematically. We thoroughly investigate the recent advancement in the field of image segmentation using membrane system. Furthermore, we highlight the merits and demerits of various software tools and methods. Finally, we suggest some intuitive future directions in light of the current limitations.