Gradient vector flow fast geometric active contours

Abstract

In this paper, we propose an edge-driven bidirectional geometric flow for boundary extraction. To this end, we combine the geodesic active contour flow and the gradient vector flow external force for snakes. The resulting motion equation is considered within a level set formulation, can deal with topological changes and important shape deformations. An efficient numerical schema is used for the flow implementation that exhibits robust behavior and has fast convergence rate. Promising results on real and synthetic images demonstrate the potentials of the flow.

Efficient numerical schemes for gradient vector flow

“…Since its publication 10 years ago, the GVF has been used and adapted to various models and problems (eg. segmentation [5,7,8], tracking [9], skeletonisation [10]). The popularity of Xu's GVF is certainly due to its effectiveness.…”

Magnetostatic Field for the Active Contour Model: A Study in Convergence

“…we ignore (b) above. The proposed method is compared against five widely used external force fields: the Euclidean distance field [2], the constant flow as in the geodesic active contour [1], the generalised version of GVF [12,11], the geodesic GVF/GGVF [6], and curvature vector flow [3]. The work closest to this paper is by Gil and Radeva [3] in which they developed a new external velocity field derived from a distance map obtained by tracing back the propagation of the object boundary under modified curvature flows.…”

“…• Geodesic GVF/GGVF (GeoGVF/GeoGGVF) -Recently, Paragios et al [6] integrated the GVF with the geodesic active contour model, referred to here as GeoGVF. The GVF provides the bidirectional force to drive the contours towards edges, while the constant flow from the geodesic model poses conditional inflation or deflation forces on the contour.…”

“…The GVF provides the bidirectional force to drive the contours towards edges, while the constant flow from the geodesic model poses conditional inflation or deflation forces on the contour. The two forces are mutually exclusive [6]:…”

“…Moreover, it requires there be no gaps in the object boundary. Paragios et al [6] added the constant flow to the GVF model which pushes the active contour when it is close to tangent to the underlying vector. This still can not solve the four-disc problem as the conditionally added constant force can not overcome the stationary point in the centre of the four discs which will prevent the contour from further propagation.…”