An advanced computational method to determine co-occurrence probability texture features

A critical shortcoming of determining co-occurrence probability texture features using Haralick's popular grey level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) is the excessive computational burden. Here, a more robust algorithm (the grey level cooccurrence integrated algorithm or GLCIA) to perform this task is presented. The GLCIA is created by integrating the preferred aspects of two algorithms: the grey level cooccurrence hybrid structure (GLCHS) and the grey level cooccurrence hybrid histogram (GLCHH). The GLCHS utilizes a dedicated 2-d data structure to quickly generate the probabilities and apply statistics to generate the features. The GLCHH uses a more efficient 1-d data structure to perform the same tasks. Since the GLCHH is faster than the GLCHS yet the GLCHH is not able to calculate features using all available statistics, the integration of these two methods generates a superior algorithm (the GLCIA). The computational gains vary as a function of window size, quantization level, and statistics selected. The GLCIA computational time relative to that of the standard GLCM method ranges from 0.04% to 16%. The GLCIA is a highly recommended technique for anyone wishing to calculate co-occurrence probability texture features, especially from large-scale digital imagery.