Moment based level set method for image segmentation

This paper presents a novel level set method for image segmentation. Gray-level moments are used to estimate two fitting functions that approximate local intensities on the two sides of object boundaries, which are then incorporated into a variational level set framework. An energy functional is defined on a contour, which characterizes the approximation of local intensities on the two sides of the contour by the two fitting functions. This energy can be minimized when the contour is on the object boundary. Thus, image segmentation is performed by minimizing this energy functional. A desirable feature of our method is that it is not sensitive to the contour initialization. Moreover, our method is able to segment images with intensity inhomogeneity. Only a small number of iterations are needed to obtain the final result, which makes our method more efficient than previous level set methods.