Generalized gradient vector flow external forces for active contours

Active contours, or snakes, are used extensively in computer vision and image processing applications, particularly to locate object boundaries. A new type of external force for active contours, called gradient vector flow (GVF) was introduced recently to address problems associated with initialization and poor convergence to boundary concavities. GVF is computed as a di⁄usion of the gradient vectors of a gray-level or binary edge map derived from the image. In this paper, we generalize the GVF formulation to include two spatially varying weighting functions. This improves active contour convergence to long, thin boundary indentations, while maintaining other desirable properties of GVF, such as an extended capture range. The original GVF is a special case of this new generalized GVF (GGVF) model. An error analysis for active contour results on simulated test images is also presented. ( 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

[1]  Max A. Viergever,et al.  A discrete dynamic contour model , 1995, IEEE Trans. Medical Imaging.

[2]  Jerry L. Prince,et al.  Gradient vector flow: a new external force for snakes , 1997, Proceedings of IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition.

[3]  Anil K. Jain.  Fundamentals of Digital Image Processing , 2018, Control of Color Imaging Systems.

[4]  Frank P. Ferrie,et al.  Darboux Frames, Snakes, and Super-Quadrics: Geometry from the Bottom Up , 1993, IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell..

[5]  Demetri Terzopoulos,et al.  Computer-assisted registration, segmentation, and 3D reconstruction from images of neuronal tissue sections , 1994, IEEE Trans. Medical Imaging.

[6]  Jerry L. Prince,et al.  Snakes, shapes, and gradient vector flow , 1998, IEEE Trans. Image Process..

[7]  Richard Szeliski,et al.  Tracking with Kalman snakes , 1993 .

[8]  Jerry L. Prince,et al.  An active contour model for mapping the cortex , 1995, IEEE Trans. Medical Imaging.

[9]  Frederic Fol Leymarie,et al.  Tracking Deformable Objects in the Plane Using an Active Contour Model , 1993, IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell..

[10]  Jorge S. Marques,et al.  A class of constrained clustering algorithms for object boundary extraction , 1996, IEEE Trans. Image Process..

[11]  Laurent D. Cohen,et al.  Finite-Element Methods for Active Contour Models and Balloons for 2-D and 3-D Images , 1993, IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell..

[12]  Laurent D. Cohen,et al.  On active contour models and balloons , 1991, CVGIP Image Underst..

[13]  Demetri Terzopoulos,et al.  A dynamic finite element surface model for segmentation and tracking in multidimensional medical images with application to cardiac 4D image analysis. , 1995, Computerized medical imaging and graphics : the official journal of the Computerized Medical Imaging Society.