Image segmentation owns the important status in the structure of image engineering and is of considerable interest in many fields. The algorithm of edge detection based on the agent searching approach and the correlation of neighbor regions is proposed in the paper. There are four species of agents in the proposed algorithm. The four species of agents can respectively compare the correlation of gray level of neighbor regions with the correlation of geometrical features of neighbor regions at 0 degree

45 degrees

90 degrees and 135 degrees to judge whether the pixels lie in the edge of the object or not and finally accomplish edge detection. Experimental results of the proposed algorithm are satisfactory. In addition

there is the comparison of experimental results between the proposed algorithm and some algorithms of edge detection in the section of experimental results

such as Prewitt operator

Sobel operator and Canny operator. The comparison of experimental results demonstrates the proposed algorithm has good performance on some aspects.