Hessian based image structure adaptive gradient vector flow for parametric active contours

Abstract

Active contours have been one of the most successful methods for image segmentation during the last two decades, but one of the shortcomings of being unable to converge to concavity is a handicap to its effectiveness. In order to address this issue, the gradient vector flow (GVF) was put forth. Although there have been a great number of works on GVF, the image structure has seldom been incorporated into GVF algorithm. In this work, the image structure characterized by the Hessian matrix is incorporated into the GVF algorithm by reformulating the smoothness constraint of GVF into matrix form. In this way, the associated diffusion PDEs are anisotropic and the modified GVF snake can converge to very long concavity and preserve weak edge simultaneously. Experiments and comparisons are presented to demonstrate the properties of the proposed strategies.