Ant colony optimization for image segmentation

It is found that the multistage decision algorithm for image segmentation with active contour model (ACM) is similar to ant colony optimization (ACO). By means of constructing solution space and heuristic information, a new algorithm based on ACM is proposed in the paper, which uses ACO to search for the best path in a constrained region. This algorithm that provides a new approach to obtain precise contour, is proved to be convergent with probability one, and will reach the best feasible boundary with minimum energy function value. Moreover, this algorithm can also be used to solve other revised ACM problems. The simulation results show that the proposed approach is more effective than the genetic algorithm in literature (Mishraa et al., 2003).