Abstract：High-quality images of Tan sheep carcass rib-eye cross-sections were taken with an industrial camera and used
to develop an algorithm to segment them. Firstly, the images were pre-processed and grayed by the weighted average
method after removing the interference by 3 × 3 template median filter. The automatic selection of the optimal segmentation
threshold by the Otsu algorithm was carried out to remove the complex background. Then, after the binarization of the
images, and the target region was roughly extracted through gradual region separation for accurate extraction of the effective
rib-eye area by region labeling and morphological processing. At last, the effective rib-eye area and the back fat thickness
were calculated. The image processing algorithm has a good segmentation and calculation performance.
