AI engineering glossary · Computer vision

What is otsu's method?

Otsu's method: An automatic way to choose a threshold by trying every cutoff on the brightness histogram and picking the one that best separates the two groups of pixels, by minimising the variance within groups. It works well when the histogram has two clear peaks.

Level: intermediateTopic: Computer vision

Otsu's method: an example

On a scanned page with dark ink on pale paper, Otsu's method finds a cutoff near the valley between the ink peak and the paper peak.

Related terms

More Computer vision terms

Where you learn it

Otsu's method is part of the AI Engineering Program, which teaches it with notes, a hands-on lab and an exam. The first lesson is free.

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