Image Segmentation Using Signed Pressure Force Based Active Contour Model

Abstract

A novel signed pressure force (SPF) based active contour model (ACM) is proposed in this work. It is implemented with help of Gaussian filtering regularized level set method, which first selectively penalizes the level set function to be binary, and then uses a Gaussian smoothing kernel to regularize it. The advantages of this method are as follows. First, a new region-based signed pressure force (SPF) function is proposed, which can efficiently stop the contours at weak or blurred edges. Second, the exterior and interior boundaries can be automatically detected with the initial contour being anywhere in the image. Third, the proposed SPF with ACM has the property of selective local or global segmentation. It can segment not only the desired object but also the other objects. Fourth, the level set function can be easily initialized with a binary function, which is more efficient. The computational cost for traditional re-initialization can also be reduced.