Multithreshold segmentation is an indispensable part of modern image processing. Color images contain more information than gray images, therefore RGB multi-thresholding segmentation techniques have been drawn much attention during recent years. Multiverse optimization (MVO) algorithm has a strong advantage in finding the optimal solution of three channels for RGB. In this paper, an MVO algorithm based on Lévy flight (LMVO) is proposed. Lévy flight is an efficient strategy which can not only increase the population diversity to prevent premature convergence but also improve the ability to jump out of the local optimum. Therefore, LMVO conduces to achieve a better balance between exploration and exploitation of MVO, so that it is faster and more robust than MVO and avoids premature convergence. Further LMVO algorithm is compared with the other eight famous meta-heuristics algorithms, by maximizing the objective function of Kapur's entropy method or of Otsu method to determine the optimal threshold. The maximum objective function, peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), feature similarity index (FSIM), structural similarity index (SSIM), CPU calculation time, optimal threshold value, and Wilcoxon's rank-sum test are used to evaluate the quality of the segmented image. The experimental results show that this method has obvious advantages in terms of objective function value, image quality measurement, convergence performance, and robustness.
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