This paper presents an optimized level set evolution (LSE) without reinitialization (LSEWR) model and a shape prior embedded level set model (LSM) for robust image segmentation. Firstly, by performing probability weighting and coefficient adaptive processing on the original LSEWR model, the optimized image energy term required by the proposed model is constructed. The purpose of the probability weighting is to introduce region information into the edge stop function to enhance the model’s ability to capture weak edges. The introduction of the adaptive coefficient enables the evolution process to automatically adjust its amplitude and direction according to the current image coordinate and local region information, thus completely solving the initialization sensitivity problem of the original LSEWR model. Secondly, a shape prior term driven by kernel density estimation (KDE) is additionally introduced into the optimized LSEWR model. The role of the KDE-driven shape prior term is to overcome the problem of image segmentation in the presence of geometric transformation and pattern interference. Even if there is obvious affine transformation in the shape prior and the target to be segmented, the target contour can still be reconstructed correctly. The extensive experiments on a large variety of synthetic and real images show that the proposed algorithm achieves excellent performance. In addition, several key factors affecting the performance of the proposed algorithm are analyzed in detail.
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