Accurate segmentation of beef-marbling images plays an important role in making the correct
decision on the beef-marbling score in an automatic beef quality grading system. The
purpose of this study is to develop a novel segmentation method to correctly separate the
fat flecks from themuscle in the rib-eye region in a beef image and to compare the proposed
segmentation method to prior algorithms. The authors first examine the vision threshold
of graders using visual test cards designed by authors, and then propose a segmentation
method of the beef-marbling image based on the grader’s vision thresholds. Finally, the
proposed method and eight other methods of image segmentation are applied to the segmentation
of the sample images and an assessment of algorithm performances was made
by a five-member panel on the basis of visual inspection. The results showthat the proposed
approach performs most robustly in comparison with the others.