scholarly journals Medical Image Segmentation Based on a Hybrid Region-Based Active Contour Model

2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tingting Liu ◽  
Haiyong Xu ◽  
Wei Jin ◽  
Zhen Liu ◽  
Yiming Zhao ◽  
...  

A novel hybrid region-based active contour model is presented to segment medical images with intensity inhomogeneity. The energy functional for the proposed model consists of three weighted terms: global term, local term, and regularization term. The total energy is incorporated into a level set formulation with a level set regularization term, from which a curve evolution equation is derived for energy minimization. Experiments on some synthetic and real images demonstrate that our model is more efficient compared with the localizing region-based active contours (LRBAC) method, proposed by Lankton, and more robust compared with the Chan-Vese (C-V) active contour model.

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Asif Aziz Memon ◽  
Shafiullah Soomro ◽  
Muhammad Tanseef Shahid ◽  
Asad Munir ◽  
Asim Niaz ◽  
...  

Segmentation accuracy is an important criterion for evaluating the performance of segmentation techniques used to extract objects of interest from images, such as the active contour model. However, segmentation accuracy can be affected by image artifacts such as intensity inhomogeneity, which makes it difficult to extract objects with inhomogeneous intensities. To address this issue, this paper proposes a hybrid region-based active contour model for the segmentation of inhomogeneous images. The proposed hybrid energy functional combines local and global intensity functions; an incorporated weight function is parameterized based on local image contrast. The inclusion of this weight function smoothens the contours at different intensity level boundaries, thereby yielding improved segmentation. The weight function suppresses false contour evolution and also regularizes object boundaries. Compared with other state-of-the-art methods, the proposed approach achieves superior results over synthetic and real images. Based on a quantitative analysis over the mini-MIAS and PH2 databases, the superiority of the proposed model in terms of segmentation accuracy, as compared with the ground truths, was confirmed. Furthermore, when using the proposed model, the processing time for image segmentation is lower than those when using other methods.


2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xuchu Wang ◽  
Yanmin Niu ◽  
Liwen Tan ◽  
Shao-Xiang Zhang

We propose a novel region-based geometric active contour model that uses region-scalable discriminant and fitting energy functional for handling the intensity inhomogeneity and weak boundary problems in medical image segmentation. The region-scalable discriminant and fitting energy functional is defined to capture the image intensity characteristics in local and global regions for driving the evolution of active contour. The discriminant term in the model aims at separating background and foreground in scalable regions while the fitting term tends to fit the intensity in these regions. This model is then transformed into a variational level set formulation with a level set regularization term for accurate computation. The new model utilizes intensity information in the local and global regions as much as possible; so it not only handles better intensity inhomogeneity, but also allows more robustness to noise and more flexible initialization in comparison to the original global region and regional-scalable based models. Experimental results for synthetic and real medical image segmentation show the advantages of the proposed method in terms of accuracy and robustness.


2012 ◽  
Vol 532-533 ◽  
pp. 892-896
Author(s):  
Hai Yong Xu ◽  
Ming Hua Liu

In this paper, we propose a novel edge and region-based active contour model. We consider geodesic curve and region-based model, and evolve a contour based on global information. Moreover, we add to the level set regularization term in the energy functional to ensure accurate computation and avoids expensive re-initialization of the level set function. Experiments on synthetic and real images show desirable performances of our method.


Author(s):  
Shigang Liu ◽  
Yali Peng ◽  
Guoyong Qiu ◽  
Xuanwen Hao

This paper presents a local statistical information (LSI) active contour model. Assuming that the distribution of intensity belonging to each region is a Gaussian distribution with spatially varying statistical information, and defining an energy function, the authors integrate the entire image domain. Then, this energy is incorporated into a variational level set formulation. Finally, by minimizing the energy functional, a curve evolution equation can be obtained. Because the image local information is considered, the proposed model can effectively deal with the image with intensity inhomogeneity. Experimental results on synthetic and real images demonstrate that the proposed model can effectively segment the image with intensity inhomogeneity.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ming Gu ◽  
Renfang Wang

A novel active contour model is proposed for segmentation images with inhomogeneity. Firstly, fractional order filter is defined by eight convolution masks corresponding to the image orientation in the eight compass directions. Then, the fractional order differentiation image is obtained and applied to the level set method. Secondly, we defined a new energy functional based on local image information and fractional order differentiation image; the proposed model not only can describe the input image more accurately but also can deal with intensity inhomogeneity. Local fitting term can enhance the ability of the model to deal with intensity inhomogeneity. The defined penalty term is used to reduce the occurrence of false boundaries. Finally, in order to eliminate the time-consuming step of reinitialization and ensure stable evolution of level set function, the Gaussian filtering method is used. Experiments on synthetic and real images show that the proposed model is efficient for images with intensity inhomogeneity and flexible to initial contour.


2010 ◽  
Vol 121-122 ◽  
pp. 222-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rui Jie Feng ◽  
Hui Yan Jiang

A novel edge-based active contour model (ACM) is proposed in this paper. Our edge-based active contour model has many advantages over the conventional active contour models. Firstly, the proposed model can get much smoother contour and needs much less iterations to evolution by being implemented with a special processing named Selectively Binary and Gaussian Filtering Regularized Level Set (SBGFRLS) method. Secondly, we introduce Bilateral Gaussian Filter which can preserve edges to smooth images. So we make weak edges more clear than traditional Gaussian Filter. Thirdly, the level set function can be easily initialized with binary function, which is more efficient to construct than the widely used signed distance function (SDF) because of the special processing. Experiments on synthetic image and segmenting liver from abdominal CT images demonstrate the advantages of the proposed method over geodesic active contours (GAC) in term of both efficiency and accuracy.


2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. Cruz-Aceves ◽  
J. G. Avina-Cervantes ◽  
J. M. Lopez-Hernandez ◽  
H. Rostro-Gonzalez ◽  
C. H. Garcia-Capulin ◽  
...  

This paper presents a new image segmentation method based on multiple active contours guided by differential evolution, called MACDE. The segmentation method uses differential evolution over a polar coordinate system to increase the exploration and exploitation capabilities regarding the classical active contour model. To evaluate the performance of the proposed method, a set of synthetic images with complex objects, Gaussian noise, and deep concavities is introduced. Subsequently, MACDE is applied on datasets of sequential computed tomography and magnetic resonance images which contain the human heart and the human left ventricle, respectively. Finally, to obtain a quantitative and qualitative evaluation of the medical image segmentations compared to regions outlined by experts, a set of distance and similarity metrics has been adopted. According to the experimental results, MACDE outperforms the classical active contour model and the interactive Tseng method in terms of efficiency and robustness for obtaining the optimal control points and attains a high accuracy segmentation.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Maria Tamoor ◽  
Irfan Younas

Medical image segmentation is a key step to assist diagnosis of several diseases, and accuracy of a segmentation method is important for further treatments of different diseases. Different medical imaging modalities have different challenges such as intensity inhomogeneity, noise, low contrast, and ill-defined boundaries, which make automated segmentation a difficult task. To handle these issues, we propose a new fully automated method for medical image segmentation, which utilizes the advantages of thresholding and an active contour model. In this study, a Harris Hawks optimizer is applied to determine the optimal thresholding value, which is used to obtain the initial contour for segmentation. The obtained contour is further refined by using a spatially varying Gaussian kernel in the active contour model. The proposed method is then validated using a standard skin dataset (ISBI 2016), which consists of variable-sized lesions and different challenging artifacts, and a standard cardiac magnetic resonance dataset (ACDC, MICCAI 2017) with a wide spectrum of normal hearts, congenital heart diseases, and cardiac dysfunction. Experimental results show that the proposed method can effectively segment the region of interest and produce superior segmentation results for skin (overall Dice Score 0.90) and cardiac dataset (overall Dice Score 0.93), as compared to other state-of-the-art algorithms.


2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammed M. Abdelsamea ◽  
Giorgio Gnecco ◽  
Mohamed Medhat Gaber ◽  
Eyad Elyan

Most Active Contour Models (ACMs) deal with the image segmentation problem as a functional optimization problem, as they work on dividing an image into several regions by optimizing a suitable functional. Among ACMs, variational level set methods have been used to build an active contour with the aim of modeling arbitrarily complex shapes. Moreover, they can handle also topological changes of the contours. Self-Organizing Maps (SOMs) have attracted the attention of many computer vision scientists, particularly in modeling an active contour based on the idea of utilizing the prototypes (weights) of a SOM to control the evolution of the contour. SOM-based models have been proposed in general with the aim of exploiting the specific ability of SOMs to learn the edge-map information via their topology preservation property and overcoming some drawbacks of other ACMs, such as trapping into local minima of the image energy functional to be minimized in such models. In this survey, we illustrate the main concepts of variational level set-based ACMs, SOM-based ACMs, and their relationship and review in a comprehensive fashion the development of their state-of-the-art models from a machine learning perspective, with a focus on their strengths and weaknesses.


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