Active Contours that Grow and Compete Driven by Local Region Descriptors

Region-based active contours are a variational framework for image segmentation. It involves estimating the probability distributions of observed features within each image region. Subsequently, these so-called region descriptors are used to generate forces to move the contour toward real image boundaries. In this paper region descriptors are computed from samples within windows centered on contour pixels and they are named local region descriptors (LRDs). With these descriptors we introduce an equation for contour motion with two terms: growing and competing. This equation yields a novel type of AC that can adjust the behavior of contour pieces to image patches and to the presence of other contours. The quality of the proposed motion model is demonstrated on complex images.