Design of an energy functional and an initial curve for the shape prior segmentation

Abstract

In general images, it is practically hard to distinguish only the desired object using the conventional image segmentation methods. In many cases, we can segment the desired object by using the shape information of the object in addition to the standard image segmentation. Chan and Zhu's work produces wrong results depending on intensities of objects. In this paper, we propose a novel model for the shape prior segmentation that produces robust results using the hierarchical image segmentation and an attraction term. Moreover, we adopt an image registration technique and a multi-region image segmentation to get an initial for a given shape prior.Finally, we consider the free-form deformation in obtaining the shape function from the reference shape prior for real-world images. Numerical experiments demonstrate the results independent of intensities of objects and the location of the reference shape prior. All numerical calculations are automatic and progress without any user input.