Two approaches, coherent and incoherent, for the optical implementation of active contours

Abstract

One coherent processor and one incoherent processor, both including an active contour optical implementation were constructed and are presented. The coherent processor consists of a complete optical target tracking processor combining a Joint Transform Correlator with an optical implementation of a segmentation method based on active contours or "snakes". The incoherent processor is an optoelectronic multichannel processor that is able to segment an object in a real image. The process is based on an active contour algorithm that has been transposed to optics in order to accelerate image processing. The correlator, in its multichannel version, speeds up the overall frame rate of the optoelectronic processor. Experimental results for both processors are presented.