Mesh segmentation is one of the important issues in digital geometry processing. Region growing method has been proven to be a efficient method for 3D mesh segmentation. However, in mesh segmentation, feature line extraction algorithm is computationally costly, and the over-segmentation problem still exist during region merging processing. In order to address these problems, a fast and efficient mesh segmentation method based on improved region growing is proposed in this paper. Firstly, the dihedral angle of each non-boundary edge is defined and computed simply, then the sharp edges are detected and feature lines are extracted. After region growing process is finished, an improved region merging method will be performed in two steps by considering some geometric criteria. The experiment results show the feature line extraction algorithm can obtain the same geometric information fast with less computational costs and the improved region merging method can solve over-segmentation efficiently.