In this paper, we propose a segmentation algorithm that can reliably separate moving objects from noisy background in the image sequance received from a camera at the fixed position. The proposed algorithm consists of three processes:generation of the difference image between the input image and the reference image, multilevel quantization of the difference image, and multistagemerging in the quantized image. The quantization process requantizes the difference image based on the multiple threshold values determined bythe histogram analysis. The merging starts from the seed region which created by using the highest threshold value and ends when termination conditions are met. the proposed method has been tested with various real imge sequances containing intruders. The test results show that the proposed algorithm can detect moving objects like intruders very effectively in the noisy environment.